Jodie Foster and Kali Reis Chip Away at a Frightening Frozen Mystery in TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, the stars of HBO’s TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY, were asked if they would make good detectives in real life. “No,” replied Foster, prompting laughter with her quick and blunt reply. “I would be a bad detective because I’m really farsighted, and I don’t notice anything. So you could change your shirt, or you could put on a mustache, and I’d just be like, ‘oh.’ ” Foster added a comedic shrug, to illustrate her point. But Reis chimed in, “I think as a team, as a real team, we’d be good.” “I do, too,” Foster agreed. Of more immediate concern is how the characters played by Foster and Reis in TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY – which debuts Sunday, Jan. 14 on Crave – must overcome their uncomfortable shared history, and work together to try to solve a baffling case of unspeakable horror. Set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, but shot primarily in Iceland, TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY finds Foster, a two-time OSCAR® winner, and Reis, who first gained fame as a professional boxer, playing grizzled police veterans Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro, respectively. When eight scientists working at a secretive research facility go missing, the subsequent investigation by Danvers and Navarro leads them into the frigid depths of something that they couldn’t possibly have imagined. One thing that viewers will notice right away about TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY is how different it looks and feels in comparison to standard TV fare. As the story begins, it’s December in Alaska, and the long winter night has descended. “Huge challenges, as you can imagine, working at night, first of all, and trying to light at nighttime, in the snow, with all the elements,” Foster said. “But strangely, we kind of had the gods on our side. Like, right when we needed all this snow, we got all the snow. And right when we needed it to be calm, it was calm.” Foster is one of the executive producers on TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY, and while she’s an acclaimed director herself, she didn’t direct this project. Instead, that job was handled by Issa López, who served as showrunner, writer, and executive producer as well. Foster described López as “my favourite director I’ve ever worked with,” which caused López to make a joke about how much money she had paid Foster to say that. Foster initially turned down the role of Danvers as it was originally written, explaining to López that she just didn’t see herself in it. Only after López did a bit of a re-think on the character’s mental state – making her tougher, and less on the verge of cracking due to past trauma – did Foster agree to come aboard. “I’d heard that people just write themselves over and over – it might be true,” López said. “I think that honestly, there are a lot of wishes that go into this. (Danvers and Navarro) 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 through 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 bubble to the surface, and they speak to you. And these are my characters.” Reis pointed out that working with a director such as López provides many similarities to the sports world. “Boxing is such an entertainment sport, or an entertainment industry in itself,” Reis said. “We have a ring up there, it’s our stage. We have to perform. There are all kinds of acts. We have to put on a show. One parallel that I like is, (López) created this story. It’s a very good story. It’s like a coach creating a game plan, and you trust that story, just like you trust the game plan. You can make adjustments, but you practise, you rehearse, and in the moment, there might be something that she sees, or I see, that the other doesn’t see – and it just works. I found a home.” But Reis then added, “at least I’m not getting punched in the face.” Well, at least not as often, in a physical sense, when it comes to what the characters have to endure. But emotionally speaking? Welcome to the icy intrigue of TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY. billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv