When Jodie Foster was offered a role in the new season of “True Detective” she wasn’t afraid to offer criticism.
“I said some scary things like, ‘I don’t like that,’” Foster says. “And then I left town.”
Producers weren’t afraid to listen to what she had to say.
“She absolutely doesn’t bull---- you,” Producer/director Issa Lopez says.
As much as Foster likes playing strong women, she thought the character needed flaws. So Lopez rewrote the character and realized she’d also need to rewrite the other detective.
“And the script just became better,” Lopez says. “Every time you receive a good note is an opportunity to completely overhaul and take the story to the next level.”
Thrilled with the changes, the two-time Oscar-winning Foster signed on and was paired with Kali Reis as detectives investigating the disappearance of eight men from a research station in Ennis, Alaska.
Parallels
Reis, a professional boxer with world championships to her name, says the change was a lot like a coach creating a game plan. “You can make adjustments, but you practice, you rehearse, and, in the moment, there might be something that she sees or I see that one of us don’t see and it works,” Reis says. “Boxing is an art in itself. But this is a just a different form of expression that I can go (into) and have a lot more longevity.”
For Foster, “True Detective: Night Country" marks her first series since 1975, when she was in an adaptation of “Paper Moon.” Television wasn’t a consideration once she started in films. “I lived in the feature world,” she says. “We’ve come to an amazing moment in cinema history and that’s the time that the real narrative is on streaming. That’s where some of the best work is being done and it gives you an opportunity to explore characters without necessarily having to be a slave to the genre.”
Making good TV
Lopez, who directed all six of the episodes, says it wasn’t like making a long movie.
“The structure of good TV is very specific and very different,” she says. “Cinema comes from the need to come together for a spectacle. TV comes from a very humble origin of selling a product. And the excuse of that is telling your story. It has evolved into an artform. Incredible art is being made by respecting, loving and inhabiting the form of TV.”
While Alaska is the setting, the fourth season of “True Detective” was largely shot in Iceland. There, many of the scenes took place at night, presenting new challenges and a unique look.
“I’ve had this experience of making really long movies but I’ve never had the experience of making a TV show where it felt so much like a family – all of us in Reykjavik and the snow, hanging out with each other,” Foster says.
“The absolute presence of nature in everything you do – in a walk, in your thoughts, in the sound – informed the story we were telling,” Lopez say. “It turned out completely different than if we had shot it in a soundstage.”
Foster, a veteran director, says she noticed how difficult it was to light nighttime scenes set in the snow. “Strangely, we had the gods on our side. Right when we needed all this snow, we got this snow. And right when we needed it to be calm, it was calm.”
Because prep work took place during the pandemic, Lopez couldn’t go to Alaska to get a sense of the culture. “What I could do was immerse myself into masses of social media,” she says. “People there get very bored during winter and they just record themselves going to the supermarket and cooking and picking up their mail. So I knew these cities intimately. And I wrote listening to the local stations.”
When it was safe, she went to Alaska, got to know the people and brought some with her to Iceland to lend authenticity.
Bringing reality
Because temperatures often dropped below zero at night, actors didn’t have to pretend. “The whole performance of these characters, going to a crime scene in those temperatures by night, are real,” Lopez says. “Around them, everything you see is ice to the horizon and then the night sky. It absolutely changes the narratives.”
That flexibility, Foster says, was essential. “I’ve worked with a lot of people but I guess it’s kismet. You find a person that understands how you can do your best and I feel like she was able to bring out the best 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.”
"True Detective: Night Country" is airing on HBO.
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