Yellowstone Star Q'orianka Kilcher Is Facing Serious Legal Trouble
"Yellowstone" cast member Q'orianka Kilcher has been making a splash on screen since she was 14 years old, when she was cast opposite Hollywood heavyweight Colin Farrell for Terrence Malick's rousing retelling of the John Smith-Pocahontas love story in "The New World." To this day, movie fans call her performance as a young Pocahontas struggling with her love of Captain Smith and her love of her Powhatan community as one of the "great performances of the decade." It's easy to see why, considering she beat out 3,000 other actors for the part, and performing is in her blood (her cousin is none other than folk-pop singer Jewel), per The Globe and Mail.
It would seem her and Farrell are still best buds 18 years later, because in March, the pair were spotted together hiking through Los Feliz in California, wearing incredibly short shorts, per Just Jared. On top of her breakout role as Pocahontas, and her work in "Yellowstone," Kilcher has continued to work in Hollywood, most recently in "Dog" and "Dora and the Lost City of Gold." But she is now facing some serious legal trouble, and it stems from an apparent on-set accident.
Q'orianka Kilcher charged with disability payment fraud
The California Department of Insurance issued a press release on July 11, stating that Q'orianka Kilcher has been charged with two felony counts of illegally collecting almost $97,000 in disability benefits, despite her claim that an on-set injury prevented her from working for a year. Kilcher allegedly hurt her neck and right shoulder while filming "Dora and the Lost City of Gold" in 2018 when she was a passenger in an on-set production vehicle. By 2019, she alleged that her neck pain was so painful that she hadn't worked all year, and had even unwillingly refused new acting work due to the injury. She began receiving temporary disability payments as such, and in one year collected $96,838, per People. However, the CDI says that an investigation found her to have worked on "Yellowstone" just a few days prior to her collecting benefits. Their statement says she surrendered to authorities and was arraigned on May 27.
In a statement to Variety, her attorney Michael Becker stated that "Yellowstone" star "never intentionally accepted benefits that she did not believe she was entitled to. As such, Ms. Kilcher will vigorously defend herself and asks that she be afforded the presumption of innocence both in and outside the courthouse."
That hasn't stopped fans on Twitter from lamenting the news, and some even calling for her imprisonment.