True Detective's new showrunner on shaking things up and why Jodie Foster is a "beast of an actor"

AVC: So you’re not worried about the inevitable Clarice Starling comparisons?

IL: We haven’t seen Jodie as a detective since [Silence], and it’s a very different character. But it is Jodie Foster and she is really, really finding the meat and the nerves and the soul of this new character. And we’ve never seen her, I think, the way we’re going to see her in Night Country. So that was a no-brainer.

And with Kali, it was more interesting because at the very beginning, Navarro was a Latina, because I’m a Latina, you know? But then, the more I learned and understood about Alaska and these northwest towns that I was referencing, 70 percent of the population is Inuit and if not Inuit, Native American. So I felt like I needed to represent that. I could not do another story where cops that do not belong to the community come to solve the issues of that community, so at least one of the detectives had to come from there. Then the question came up of who in that community could play this, and Francine Maisler, genius casting director, was like “There’s this woman, you need to see her.” She sent me a photograph [of Kali] and immediately I went, “That’s her.” Just with a photograph.

AVC: True Detective tradition usually sees two big-name stars anchoring the cast: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in season one; Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams in the second season; and Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff in season three. Kali Reis only had one acting gig prior to Night Country, in the 2021 film Catch The Fair One, as she’s better known for her professional boxing career. What did HBO say when you wanted her cast as the show’s co-lead?

IL: Navarro has a spark and a soulfulness and a depth of tenderness, but that character is tough. I wanted someone who could give me both. Talking to Kali and reading with her, I was like, “She’s the one; she can do it.” I went to HBO and was like, “I believe in this.” Usually True Detective is a two-starrer, two big stars, but they saw what I saw in Kali and they trusted me.

AVC: As you mentioned, you changed Navarro from being a Latina to an Inuit woman. Did you work with the indigenous communities in building the character and the overall setting?

IL: I wrote a first draft of the script and immediately went to find Inuit voices. We worked with two producers—one of them Inupiat and one Inuit—and both of them went through the script and immediately came back and said, “Where has Evangeline Navarro been all these years?” That was very moving. The story is not an Inuit story but it lives in this world and it’s informed by this. So they went through and were like, “That’s not how we cook that, that’s not how we say that, she would never stay quiet after hearing something like that, that’s not what we wear.” We went deeply into work with them for a couple of drafts and they made sure the places and the looks and the clothing [were right] because both our production designer and costume designer, Daniel Taylor and Alex Bovaird, went to Alaska to really absorb the space, absorb the people, and get the stuff that we used. It’s the real deal.

AVC: The story is set in Alaska but you actually shot in Iceland. How was it braving that tundra?

IL: It doesn’t matter how tough you think it’s going to be. You’re not prepared. I’m Mexican, so I’m really not fond of the cold. We shot for 49 nights back-to-back, 120 days total. And those 49 nights, most of them out in the ice, they do something to you in a beautiful way. Some of the nights we were at minus 23 degrees Celsius, in conditions that I would never think of being in, but it just informs the story and feeds the feelings and the way you experience the series. A lot of people who have watched it are like, “I felt cold when I was watching it,” and that happened because we were there, because the actors were cold, because the filmmakers were cold. And it needs to happen to really transmit that physical sensation through the screen.

AVC: And there is something very unsettling, almost creepy, about the cold. You’ve had great success for your work in the horror genre—was there anything specific from the horror tradition that you wanted to include in this season?

IL: Absolutely. First of all, one of the biggest references for it is Carpenter’s The Thing, no doubt. Tsalal [the research station in Night Country] has undertones, the way we shot it, to Kubrik’s the Overlook and a feel of Nostromo, even, from Alien. But beyond that, one of the things I loved the most about the first True Detective is that it had that supernatural flavor—it had that Carcosa; it had a Yellow King. So when HBO approached me, I said, “Guys, me being who I am, I’m going to tap into that and go for it.” So you can watch the whole show and come out of it very much like True Detective the original, thinking that everything has a rational explanation. Perhaps Cohle fried his brain with drugs or perhaps birds really were drawing spirals in the sky? Perhaps he really saw Carcosa at the end? So this is the same—there is a path here where you can go, “Every single event has a natural explanation,” or there’s more than what we can see at stake. And I love that liminal space.

AVC: Now that you have one under your belt, would you take on another season of True Detective?

IL: That’s a question for HBO!