‘True Detective’ Returns With Women-Centered Story, Featuring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis

HBO’s Emmy-winning anthology drama series True Detective has gotten a female-focused makeover for the show’s fourth season. Not only does True Detective: Night Country (which premiered January 14) have women as the two central characters (played by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis), but the series also has a female showrunner (Issa López) for the first time. Previous seasons of True Detective were led by creator Nic Pizzolatto as the showrunner and had men as the show’s law enforcement protagonists.

Each season of True Detective is about the hunt for an elusive serial killer. True Detective: Night Country — which takes place in the remote fictional town of Ennis, Alaska — tells the story of how police detectives Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) work in their investigations of a serial killer and the mysterious disappearance of eight male scientists, who were the only people stationed at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. Danvers is a police chief who is methodical and analytical in her work style. It’s in contrast to Navarro, who is more likely to be spontaneous and make decisions based on her emotions. Navarro is haunted by not being able to solve the murder of a local Iñupiat woman named Anne Kowtok, and she convinces Danvers to let her back on the case, which has remained open for years.

López is an executive producer, writer, and director for True Detective: Night Country, which is the most critically acclaimed season for the series so far, according to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Foster, who is an executive producer for True Detective: Night Country, makes her return to series television, in her first starring role on a TV series since 1975, when she co-starred in the short-lived TV version of the Oscar-winning movie Paper Moon. Reis, a former professional boxer, is one of the few Indigenous women to play a lead character on a major-network American TV series. Here is some of what López, Foster, and Reis said in December 2023, when they gathered in Los Angeles for a True Detective: Night Country press conference.

The True Detective series has a very unique tone and style to the way crimes and investigations unfold, which fans love. Have you retained any of that for this season? How does this season differ tonally?

López: Something about these two characters who are so different, in this world that was in itself a third character: this Gothic-ness of America, this endless landscape where anything can happen. And I kept those. I kept the characters. I kept the landscape. I kept that corner of America that we don’t often see.

And I just turn it on its head and I created these two female characters, who are so different, trying to solve this very, very eerie crime in the backdrop of this endless landscape, a character in itself. And Night Country was born.

Jodie, what attracted you to join this show? It’s your first starring role in a TV series since 1975.

Foster: We’ve come to an amazing moment, I think, in cinema history. And that’s the time that real narrative is really on streaming. So I think that’s where some of the best work is being done. And it gives you an opportunity to explore characters, without necessarily having it be a slave to the genre.

And also having six episodes allows you to bring in other voices, I think, than the traditional voices that we might see and that we have seen in features. So yeah, I’m super-excited. Of course, I’ve directed and produced in the television world a lot.

Kali, what attracted you to join this show?

Reis: It was just the story. I can’t compare anything to what Jodie’s experience is at all. But being a fan of just film and cinema and being a fan of the show, and then being able to read the story that Issa created, I wanted to know what happened next. I’m learning that if I enjoy it as a fan, of course, if I have a chance to be a part of it, why not?

[With] both Danvers and Navarro, Issa has created these characters that are so intriguing and to have so many layers, that it was great to see on paper and then imagine in my head and also be a part of the creation process and have my character be revealed to me. And then have Danvers be revealed as well and just kind of see them dancing in these circumstances together.

Issa, can you talk about crafting this narrative with two strong women at the lead?

López: I’d heard that people just write themselves over and over. It might be true. I think that honestly there is a lot of wishes that go into this. These are the women that on one hand I wish I was, in strength and in resilience and in complexity. These are also the women that I fear I am. They have flaws that I see in myself and the people I love around me. So, you use all of that and you put it in a pot and you let it either brew or rot or both. And they bubble to the surface and they speak to you. And these are my characters.

Jodie, in addition to starring in this series, you’re an executive producer on the series. What was it like to work with Issa as both an actor and an executive producer?

Foster: Well, this one’s really a dream come true. … She is my favorite director I’ve ever worked with. It really is a blessing. I’ve worked with a lot of people. But I guess it’s kismet. You finally find a person that understands how you can do your best. And I feel like she was able to bring that out in me. And then I got to see her do it with all sorts of other people in different ways. And that was really the great draw of the collaboration. And that really happened from the beginning.

And it was just amazing to see a brand-new character emerge that was more than I could have ever hoped for or anticipated and that I think really helps the dynamic between Danvers and Navarro. For Navarro as the central character and as the voice of the film, to really be able to support that journey of Navarro’s, by using Danvers’ peccadillos in order to support her journey.

Much of True Detective: Night Country was filmed in Iceland. How did this environment add to the feel of the show, and what were your experiences like?

López: Well, I’m Mexican, so I was not prepared. But I wrote it myself, so what can I say.

Foster: Yeah, huge challenges, as you can imagine, working at night, first of all, and trying to light at nighttime and in the snow with all the elements. But strangely, we kind of had the gods on our side. Right when we needed all this snow we got all [this] snow. And right when we needed it to be calm, it was calm.

That being said, Kali and I … we had a little summer vacation. And we went to Alaska, the real Alaska. And obviously we have this great love for Iceland, but Alaska is a whole other absolute beautiful magical place, where you really do feel the nature and you feel everybody’s connection to nature.

And the survival element to that, the kind of pain that comes along with that. You can imagine … in the Arctic and northern Alaska, and Greenland, for example, how many hundreds of thousands of people died because they just couldn’t survive it. You really feel like, “I got to watch out, because if my car breaks down and I don’t have enough gas or whatever, I could die.” I think [that is] a part of the reason why people are so drawn to it. And of course, the extraordinary people that we met there.

Reis: People talk about Iceland having such energy and this magic. And that was one thing that I know personally, I felt so strongly. … And then getting a chance to go to Alaska and actually bringing the people from Alaska to Iceland, it kind of all made its own little gumbo pot of this story to tell. And I was really blessed to be able to go to Alaska, visit the land, thank the land, thank the people, and have the actual people of that land who were telling their stories, and visit them.

Kali, your character’s background as an Indigenous woman is a big part of her self-discovery. Can you elaborate on what that meant to you?

Reis: Yeah, she comes from two different worlds. She has a Dominican background and an Indigenous Iñupiat background, which is something I can personally relate to, being Wampanoag and Cape Verdean and having to kind of not be enough for either side. Being immersed into a culture with Navarro, but not being a part of it … having some kind of bad relationship with the Dominican side, because that’s where her father comes from. Her mom took her away from her land. So, there’s just a lot of balancing between two worlds.

And she has just this journey that she has to go on and also being part of law enforcement and military. She wants to help her people, but she wants to help herself and her family. But she also has to take care of herself, but she also wants to be part of these people, these beautiful people that she has no idea what she is.

It’s a huge part that she didn’t even realize was really at the core of trying to find what she really was — didn’t even know what she was looking for. And it has a lot to do with the dark. It has a lot to do with the cold. It has a lot to do with Alaska itself that she’s been trying to run away from, or she tries to avoid, by immersing herself in the enemy, so to speak, as well. It’s a back-and-forth battle that she has to deal with all the time, on top of dealing with Danvers.

Can you talk about how intrigued you became about the Indigenous spiritually and mythology that are so prevalently immersed throughout this story?

Foster: For me, that was my draw … to really have the opportunity to learn about and for the audience to learn about the genuinely centered indigenous story, as opposed to some of the lip service that we get in films that are out. And I just wanted to know more. It’s not my voice. It’s their voice, and I wanted to support and make sure that their stories were centered.

López: I created a fictional town that is a mix of three towns in northwestern Alaska. And the more I understood of these towns, the more I understood that the presence of Yupik, Iñupiat voices is central to the experience and identity of these towns. I can watch all the YouTube videos in the world, it’s not going to do the trick. So once the first pass of the script was ready, we got in two Native American producers [Princess Daazhraii Johnson and Cathy Tagnak Rexford], who came on board and went through everything with us. They went through everything and changed a bunch of things, for the best, no doubt.

Reis: I’m not the spokeswoman for all Iñupiat people, but I am proudly Indigenous; and it’s really important for me in everything I do, especially getting to the film industry, being such an unfamiliar face we see on screens now. …

Our creation stories, it’s not all sad and dreary. We pass down stories. That’s how we get our knowledge, especially some people like the Iñupiat people, to be in such rural areas and have so much darkness. What else do they have to do but create and create stories, create traditions, their culture, their songs?

Having [Native American] executive producers on our project was hugely important to me to just to have the right representation. I didn’t grow up in the Arctic. So it was really important for me just to ask, “How do you want to see yourself on screen? Tell me some stories.” We love to laugh. We love to tell stories. We love to eat and have community. … To actually really do the best we could to get the representation right was really important for me.