[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for True Detective: Night Country.]

The Big Picture

Issa López surprised HBO by pitching a ‘True Detective’ story set in Alaska’s ice, which immediately intrigued the network.
The writer/director was proud of her work on the series and recommends that viewers who watched it weekly also re-watch it all at once for maximum emotional impact.
The eerie atmosphere and powerful sound design were intentional choices made to keep the audience on edge throughout the season.

Written and directed by Issa López, the fourth season of the HBO crime anthology, True Detective: Night Country, is all about mood and atmosphere, from the dark and frosty nights to the hints of supernatural and horror. At its core is the uneasy partnership between Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), the investigation of the disappearance of eight men who were operating the Arctic Research Station in Ennis, Alaska, and how that connects to the murder of a local Indigenous activist. Different in their approach but with the same goal in mind, Danvers and Navarro are shaped by personal tragedy and must heal their own wounds on the winding road to the truth.

For Mexican filmmaker López, her horror fantasy flick Tigers Are Not Afraid caught the attention of HBO, leading to her pitching what became True Detective: Night Country. With Foster and Reis in place, a very clear vision for where she was headed, and every detail thought about and dissected, the result is a snowy sinister tale with a sprinkle of supernatural on top of a gritty crime thriller.

After screening all six episodes, Collider got the opportunity to chat with the showrunner about all things True Detective, rewatching Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs for inspiration, what made Foster and Reis the perfect pairing, wanting to find surprises in the details, creating the corpsicle, how the severed tongue played into the story, and knowing from the beginning how the story would end.

True Detective Anthology series in which police investigations unearth the personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within and outside the law.Release Date January 12, 2014 Creator Nic Pizzolatto Seasons 4 Studio HBO Streaming Service(s) Max

HBO Wanted Showrunner Issa López For Season 4 of ‘True Detective’ After Watching ‘Tigers Are Not Afraid’
Image via HBO

Collider: I have been curious about what True Detective might look like told in a woman’s voice, and thanks to you, I no longer have to imagine that. What brought you to this series? How did this come about, with you fully in charge as showrunner, writer, director and executive producer?

ISSA LÓPEZ: I made a movie, called Tigers Are Not Afraid, that had a long [journey], but found its audience, and it’s beloved in a little cult way. HBO watched it and loved it, and they felt that it had a sense that reminded them of True Detective. It was the combination of very stark, gritty reality with a crime scene that was very sinister and a thriller and a whiff of the supernatural. They called me and asked, “What would you do with True Detective?,” and I had a couple of ideas floating. I was already thinking of a whodunit, and I was thinking of the Arctic and I had the shape of the story, which was perfect. When I pitched my vision, they were completely surprised. They called a Mexican filmmaker, and they probably thought I was gonna make it on the border with cartels. I was like, “No, it’s gonna be in Alaska in the ice,” and they were not expecting that. When I told them the story of these scientists disappearing and all of that, they were like, “We’re in.” They knew immediately that I had a vision. It came from them, the idea of me directing every episode. I still can’t believe the risks that they took, but they’re so happy with the results.

What are you most proud of, when it comes to what you were able to do, not just with this season, but with the filmmaking of it all?

LÓPEZ: It’s a movie, and it’s not. It’s hard because HBO drops weekly, and I think there’s something super yummy about having one episode at a time. The cliffhangers are intense in the show and having to wait for the next one and build up the satisfaction of receiving it is an experience that people should have. But also, if you happen to watch all the episodes back-to-back, it has an emotional impact where people are shaken after watching it. In that sense, it is like a movie. So, what I recommend is that, after you watch it weekly, sit down and re-watch it on a Saturday in the dark and hopefully in the cold. I’m incredibly proud of this because I’ve always said that if you’re not fucking terrified of what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it. I’ve shot a bunch of different things in different genres, action scenes, horror and comedy, which I think are the two most difficult genres in the world, but I had never done six-and-something hours of storytelling with the technical challenges in the dark, in the Arctic, with A-listers. It’s so beyond the scope of what I’ve done before. I had directed big production TV in the UK and I had done visual effects, but still, this is on a whole different level. You don’t know if you’re going to achieve it, and that’s the whole point.

When HBO greenlit it and we went for dinner with the executives in charge of the show, they sat me down and they said, “Listen, you don’t know what you just got yourself into. We’ve seen very experienced filmmakers get to the point that they can’t continue when they take on directing every episode of a series. So, we want you to know that we have your back.” I was scared, but then I went and did it, and you know what? It was a joy. I’m not going to say the Arctic was not difficult, and the cold and the dark and the 120 days of shooting were not difficult, but it was such a joy and such a pleasure to be on that set. We laughed so much and it was such a loving thing. Coming on the other side and seeing it come together gave me a feeling that you can shoot anything, after doing that. Because he directed The Underground Railroad, Barry Jenkins, who is one of the executive producers, told me, “You’re going to complete this and you’re going to feel like a superhero. It is a superpower to do that. And then, after that, you can do anything.” And it does feel that way.

Showrunner Issa López Collaborated Closely With ‘True Detective: Night Country’s Sound Designer

This series has a pervasive and ongoing feeling of foreboding, from the atmosphere to the darkness to the sound throughout it. You’re constantly on edge while watching it, which seems appropriate for this type of story. Was that something you intentionally wanted to play with and keep building throughout the season?

LÓPEZ: The sound design on this is the same sound designer that worked on Tigers, is the same sound designer from Pan’s Labyrinth, and is the same sound designer from all of [Alejandro] Iñárritu’s movies. He and I created the sound design. It was from the scripts. You could read the scripts and a lot of people that were working with me said, “This is going to be very heavy sound design,” and I was like, “That’s my thing.” I live for the music and the sound design. The whole point was that the eeriness of this world, where you know that there’s more than what you can see, had to come across the screen and the cold had to come across the screen. You use every element you can, from the darkness to the sound design, so it was designed to keep you on edge.

Related Jodie Foster Explains Why ‘Silence of the Lambs’ Is ‘True Detective: Night Country’s “Granddaddy” A fan of ‘Contact,’ Kali Reis kept her inner geek from getting starstruck while working with co-star Jodie Foster.

You’ve talked about how this performance will show audiences that Jodie Foster they haven’t seen. What led you to see it? What made you see this character in her?

LÓPEZ: When I got the call about True Detective, I went and rewatched it and I immediately got a sense that I didn’t get the first time I watched it, that it was heavily inspired by Se7en, which is a movie I love. So, I sat down and watched Se7en, which is still so good. And then, I was like, “This is actually so much The Silence of The Lambs.” So, I rewatched The Silence of The Lambs and was like, “Where is Jodie Foster? We need her. We need to see a lot of her.” I thought, “Wouldn’t it be perfect to bring her back as a detective that’s a completely different character in a completely different situation, but to see her again, cracking a very sinister crime.” So, she was in my mind from the very beginning.

I also love strange little details about characters, including that moment with Christopher Eccleston’s character laying in bed watching TV while whitening his teeth. Was that something that was scripted? Was that something he brought to it? How did that happen?

LÓPEZ: I’m a big fan of John August, who is an incredible and very generous writer. He and Craig Mazin have a podcast about screenwriting that I used to listen to, and John created a list of 11 points for how to write a scene. For a young writer, I always recommend it. I don’t like texts that tell you how to write a script. I don’t encourage that. However, these 11 points for how to write a scene are really good reminders on how to keep it alive, and my favorite of those points is, “What can be surprising in this scene?” So, you write the scene, you know what needs to happen, you know what needs to be said, you know what information has to be there, and you know who needs to be in it, and then you figure out where it can take place. But is that it? Can you think of a different place? What is an environment that is going to make it different? What can be surprising? Everything I write, I’m like, “Okay, fine, this happens, and this and this, but what can be surprising?” So, I thought, “If he’s whitening his teeth, what else is happening?” I went with that, and it was scripted.

‘True Detective: Night Country’s Corpsicle Was Inspired by the Visual of a King Rat
Image via HBO

Did you spend a lot of time thinking about the visual look you wanted when it came to the corpsicle?

LÓPEZ: Yeah, I spent so much time thinking about it. As I was writing it, I was like, “It’s a knot of flesh and terrified faces, and you don’t know how many are there.” But I was like, “Fuck, making this work is going to be a nightmare. If I don’t get it right, there’s no series. I have to rewrite this.” HBO and the executives and the EPs were like, “How are you going to do this?” And I was like, “Don’t worry about it. Monsters are my thing.” I was terrified, so I called Guillermo del Toro. I was like, “Maestro, I need a monster maker in the UK,” because we were going to be shooting in Iceland and we had to move that thing. And he said, “Dave Elsey [and his wife].” I called this couple, who are geniuses. They’re so sweet, and they make these monsters. So, I sat down with them and we went crazy. I had visions of Dante’s Inferno. I had visions of a King Rat, when rats get together and their tails get knots, and then they die all together. And then, when I was a child, my dad would take me to see mummified bodies because we have that in Mexico, and the expressions of those mummies stayed with me. We put all those visuals together with Greek sculpture, and we came up with this thing, which is a piece of art, but it had to be horrifying. And it worked. I was so relieved when I saw it.

All this starts with the murder of a Native woman whose tongue is all that’s left of her and she cannot speak for herself anymore. It’s such a powerful image and idea. How did that come about?

LÓPEZ: It’s funny how the brain works. I was like, “The men are gone. The popcorn is there. The sandwich is there. There has to be something behind, so we know how fucked up what happened there is. What could it be?” And I was like, “It’s a tongue.” It’s a tongue because there’s a story that needs to be told. It’s the tongue that is telling you, “Here’s a story that needs to be told, and it can’t be told, so this is the show that’s going to tell that story.”

Related What’s the Significance of the Chin Tattoos in ‘True Detective: Night Country’? They have a deeper cultural meaning than you may realize.

I love the pairing of Danvers and Navarro. What led you to want to pair Jodie Foster with Kali Reis? What was it about her and the two of them together? What did you love about that dynamic?

LÓPEZ: First of all, there was the visual of it. When I found Kali, I pictured her next to Foster and I was like, “Oh, I would watch this. I would absolutely watch this.” And then, their energies are so different, but so complimentary. They’re so funny. There’s so much humor in the way they interact. They portray absolutely different women that really work together, which is what happened on the show. They’re so different, but at the same time, they work so well together and the chemistry was real.

What is the most impressive thing about watching someone like Jodie Foster work? Does it feel different to work with an actor like her because she’s also a producer and director in her own right? Is the communication different?

LÓPEZ: Oh, my God, I don’t care anymore about working with anybody else, ever. It’s over for me. She ruined it. Jodie is such a delight and so easy to work with. She’s a director herself, so she would bring ideas and say, “We could do this, or we could do this, or we could take your idea and I can give you this on top of that.” That was just mind-blowing. But also, the effortlessness when she walks onto the set, in a second, the thing is real, and it’s happening. You don’t have a sense of acting when she’s working. She’s beyond that point. Things just happen there. There is no method or technique. She just walks into the character. It’s an act of magic to behold. And then, on top of that, there’s the generosity. She makes it her mission to bring younger actors to the level that she’s working at, in a way that is not controlling or telling them how to do it. It’s simply creating the space for them to step up. It’s incredible. It’s just amazing to watch, and a lesson in humanity, in generosity, and in filmmaking.

‘True Detective: Night Country’ Showrunner Issa López Always Knew the Story’s Ending
Image via HBO

Was the ending of the season always the ending that you saw for this story and for Danvers and Navarro, or did that change, along the way?

LÓPEZ: I knew from the beginning where it was going to end. I knew who the killer was and why and why they did it, and I knew where those two would end. In the end, it’s a love story between these two women. It’s the story of friendship and belonging because the rest of the journey is about loneliness.

True Detective: Night Country is available to stream on Max. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Max