True Detective became a phenomenon by trawling psychological depths and intertwining humanity’s unimaginable evils with the supernatural. The new fourth iteration, Night Country, channels that thrilling first season 10 years ago but now puts women at the fore.
Set during a perpetually dark and snowy December in a remote Alaska town where Indigenous locals are clashing with a mining company, the season centres on two surly detectives attempting to unravel why a team of scientists have vanished from a research outpost. Jodie Foster, as police chief Liz Danvers, brandishes a law-enforcement badge for the first time since Silence of the Lambs 32 years ago, and real-life pro boxing champ Kali Reis plays her headstrong partner, Evangeline Navarro, with both characters haunted by past traumas and grappling with fraught private lives.
At the show’s helm is Mexican filmmaker Issa López, who directed and wrote every episode. Full of complicated, flawed, and bracingly dimensional female characters, Night Country puts into relief just how much brooding male energy dominated the previous three seasons (Rachel McAdams notwithstanding), which left many viewers disappointed or worse. (Early reviews for Night Country have set a record high for the franchise.)
Shot by Florian Hoffmeister (Oscar nominated for Tár) on location in Iceland, where temperatures plummeted to -23 degrees, the six episodes are perfect winter entertainment, alternately evoking John Carpenter’s The Thing and the terrifying White Walker moments from Game of Thrones. Both True Detective diehards and those who have never heard of “time is a flat circle” are sure to enjoy the eerie, chilling, supremely satisfying ride.
Foster, Reis, and López cosied up on a couch recently to discuss how the new season can be traced back to Silence of the Lambs and Seven; the similarities between boxing and acting; and why Foster relishes her new role as “the old wise one”.
Issa, were you a fan of True Detective?
Issa López: I have never met anyone who didn’t love the first season. It’s beloved. Then when HBO asked me, I thought about why I liked it so much, why we still remember it. True Detective has a feeling, a taste, a smell, and if I could capture that, I would be okay.
Talk about your actors. It seems like no one else could have been cast, they’re so perfect in their roles.
López: When I received the assignment and rewatched that first season, it hit me that there was such a big influence from David Fincher’s Seven, which I love. So I watched Seven and was absolutely amazed at how it’s a direct and close descendant of Silence of the Lambs, which I think is the inciting incident for all these stories. There were only four years between the two films. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if they were part of True Detective’s genealogy, to go directly to a part of what made those movies incredible? So I knew I would write Danvers for Jodie Foster.
Meanwhile, the more I learned about Alaska, the more I understood that the majority of the population is Native and I was writing more elements related to that experience. I felt it would be unfair to have two characters who did not belong to the culture figure out this puzzle. But who could play this force of nature that is Navarro? I saw a photograph and a movie Kali made [2021’s Catch the Fair One], and she blew me away – the strength, power, and gravitas.
Kali and Jodie, what drew you to these characters?
Kali Reis: I am a huge fan of True Detective and wanted to be a part of the masterpiece that is Issa’s story. Representation matters so dearly to me as a mixed Indigenous woman, and with the culture engraved in such a beautiful story as part of the place, it was a no-brainer.
Jodie Foster: You just have that instinct where you know something’s right. I felt that way about Silence of the Lambs too. Sometimes when a piece of material comes from a profound place, it comes out of the typewriter – we say “typewriters”, you say “computers” – and it’s instinctually beautiful. I feel like we all did the best work of our lives on this, mostly because the material was so inspiring.
Jodie, how do you compare this character, who’s also a crime solver, with Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs?
Foster: Clarice and Danvers couldn’t be more different, but the genre has a kind of horror character depth, where the horror existing on the outside is mirrored by the horror that these characters are going through. Silence did it beautifully. It’s great to have that provenance, but the spirituality in Night Country that’s part of the Indigenous landscape is different from anything I’ve ever done.
Kali, do you find any similarities between boxing and acting in a role like this?
Reis: I find a lot of parallels. The biggest is always being present. You can practice and rehearse, but you don’t know how things will go until that camera’s in front of you. And the repetition and learning what worked and didn’t work and having somebody on the other side of the camera or a coach see what you don’t see. I’m a perfectionist, a little OCD Virgo.
What’s something you learned from Jodie, and vice versa?
Reis: Always know your lines. [All laugh.] No, it’s laughter. We were telling such a dark story, no pun intended, but keeping it light creates a better work atmosphere. People think you must always be serious when you’re telling a serious story, but if I feel comfortable enough to laugh, it opens me up to dig deeper.
Foster: I learned a lot from Kali about instinct and connection to the soul. Ask me a question about my character, and I’ll be like, [dismissively] “I don’t know, she’s hungry.” [Reis and López laugh.] Ask Kali a question about her character, and it could be 20 minutes of such thoughtful spiritual connection. I’d like to be the person who thinks more that way. I’m going to try and be more like you.
There is a fair amount of physicality in the show, often in brutal conditions. Jodie and Kali, did you feel intimidated by anything?
Reis: The intimacy scenes. I’m a newcomer, so I had so many questions. On paper I was like, how am I going to pull this off? But I was blessed with a wonderful scene partner. And my intimacy scenes were a piece of cake compared to Jodie’s. [Laughs.]
Foster: Ours were fun – we did a lot of laughing. For me, I kept asking about the falling-through-the-ice [into freezing water] business. I asked for a couple of months and never got answers. Then I started getting worried – I was like, we’re not really doing it in the water, right? We did do it in a tank. And even though I was busy pretending it was all okay, it was pretty scary. I had all my clothes on and was weighted down so I wouldn’t float to the top and had a diver pull me up when they said “cut”.
López: She rehearsed, she was prepared, there was a diver, it was all controlled in the tank. And then we shoot, and she’s just sinking, and I could feel myself panicking. When she comes up, I go, “Jodie, are you okay?” Because it seems fucking terrifying. She was like, [gasping] “It’s good.” She’s such a trooper and will do anything you ask her to. She wouldn’t say she was scared.
We’re seeing so many Indigenous stories in Hollywood. Do you see this as part of that wave?
López: It is never by chance that stories start revolving around something. Something in our psyches is asking to be heard. We cannot continue walking forward without looking back in honesty and looking around because Indigenous voices are not the past – they are here and alive. We brought on two Inuit and Iñupiac producers, who we worked closely with to make the story true. What mattered was that the Indigenous characters were not just there to be the background while the white characters did the work, but to be the characters who actively solve the mystery.
Reis: We have a protocol amongst Indigenous communities: whatever territory you’re in, you ask permission or learn what their traditions are. [Editor’s note: Reis is of Cherokee, Nipmuc, and Seaconke Wampanoag ancestry.] So I asked the same producers, “What are the slangs? What are your creation stories?” It has been booming for Indigenous artists in mainstream media, and the momentum is just getting going.
Foster: The way change happens for these things is you start with discussions of representation and then hopefully you move on from there, because it can’t just be about representation. It has to be about centring Indigenous stories. And for me, having worked for so many years and made a lot of movies, nothing is more satisfying than being the old wise one who is now here to serve other people’s time. It’s not my time, it’s their time. And nothing makes me happier than supporting the focus on other people’s stories.
Will there be another season of True Detective?
López: If everybody enjoys watching it one tenth as much as we enjoyed making it, yes, let’s do another one.
Reis: Day Country. [All laugh.]
Foster: In the Caribbean.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
