The Buzz Around Angelina LookingGlass and The Rivals of Amziah King 

In The Rivals of Amziah King, the genre-bending drama about grief, inheritance, loyalty and revenge, Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey returns to the big screen as a charismatic beekeeper, but it’s his young co-star, Angelina LookingGlass, who’s generating buzz. LookingGlass, whose indigenous heritage is a mix of Oglala Lakota, Navajo, Seneca and Kiowa Comanche, gives the film a complex center as Kateri, a vulnerable young woman who is transformed into a fiercely determined protector of Amziah’s honey-making business, and his legacy.

“I worked with those bees for three months,” LookingGlass says. “So when we were shooting, I was very calm, and just excited to have that opportunity to do that.” One of the most striking elements of The Rivals of Amziah King is its use of bees as both a literal part of the story and an extension of its themes of community, inheritance and transformation. LookingGlass found that working with the bees became one of the most memorable parts of the experience, especially the final sequence. “They put a queen under my shirt, in this box,” LookingGlass says. “So they can sense her smell. And so they’ll go to her wherever she is.” As the cameras rolled at sunset, the bees swarmed over her body. “It was beautiful. I really didn’t have any nerves,” LookingGlass says. While she was stung about seven times during production, LookingGlass says each time felt “like a bug bite.” McConaughey, meanwhile, is allergic to bees, yet it didn’t stop him from getting into the thick of things. “He’s so fearless,” LookingGlass says.

Their shared experience as beekeepers was part of what made her first major acting role so extraordinary. “I really love what I do. I love acting. I love performing,” LookingGlass says. She remembers her mother’s obsessive love of movies, and being introduced to the works of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino at a young age. By middle school, LookingGlass started doing theater, though she increasingly found herself drawn toward acting for the camera. At 18, after studying at The Stella Adler School of Acting, an Instagram casting call led LookingGlass to an audition for The Rivals of Amziah King. Director Andrew Patterson saw her audition among hundreds of Indigenous actresses. “He loved my work,” LookingGlass says. After a Zoom meeting and an in-person directors meeting came a chemistry read with McConaughey, and then she was cast. 

When Kateri reconnects with Amziah, she at last has a sense of home and family. When Amziah’s beehives are stolen and he dies of a heart attack, Kateri’s inheritance of his honey business gives that grief an additional purpose: protecting what he left behind. “She’s trying to take what was hers back,” LookingGlass explains, and Kateri’s grief transforms into a desire for vengeance. “She’s had enough of how the world is kind of beating her up.” That transformation required LookingGlass to resist judging Kateri, even as her actions became increasingly extreme. Patterson helped LookingGlass prepare by giving her a cinematic homework, assigning her to watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Lady Macbeth (2016) and The Godfather (1972). This last film is particularly significant: much like Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), Kateri starts with a sense of innocence before gradually embracing actions she might once have considered unthinkable in order to protect her interests, and those of her new family. Just as Michael must become The Godfather, Kateri is now The Queen Bee. “She’s not necessarily a hero or a villain,” LookingGlass says. “She’s kind of in the center.” That ambiguity is central to the film’s genre-bending identity. The Rivals of Amziah King moves between drama, thriller, crime story and something approaching a modern Western, while its beekeeping imagery gives the film a mythology all its own. Kateri’s journey is ultimately about taking control of her life — and becoming the person she needs to be to protect the legacy she inherited.

The film’s elaborate and enchanting musical sequences provided another unusual experience for LookingGlass. Because Kateri is introduced to Amziah’s surrogate family of bluegrass musicians as an outsider, Patterson deliberately kept her away from rehearsals with McConaughey and the other performers. “He wanted my reaction to be raw and real,” LookingGlass says, and it paid off. As Kateri witnesses Amziah and his friends’ musical display, the authentic sense of joy and wonder that LookingGlass brings allows the audience to feel like they are right there in the room. “That was so magical to see all that happen,” LookingGlass says. “I definitely learned a lot from just watching everyone.”

The Rivals of Amziah King represents a remarkable first chapter in a very promising career, LookingGlass isn’t simply playing Kateri’s transformation — she is experiencing her own transformation as a performer, discovering what she can do when given the opportunity to step into the center of a story and, like Kateri herself, rise to the occasion. The King is dead. Long live the Queen. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more film interviews from Patrick Gibbs:
Murderbot Composer Amanda Jones Is a Music Making Machine
Emmy Nominee Tal Anderson Talks Authenticity and Representation

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