Indigenous actor relying on instincts in ‘True Detective’
Isabella Star LaBlanc keeps running into her 17-year-old self.
The actor, 25, was reminded of her on a recent visit home to Minneapolis, on a stop by her old high school. But she has been running into her in Iceland, too. There, LaBlanc is filming the next season of “True Detective,” playing Leah, the 17-yearold stepdaughter of Jodie Foster’s character, Detective Liz Danvers.
Like LaBlanc, her character is Native American. But unlike LaBlanc at that age, she’s proud. Confident.
“I was very shy, nervous,” said LaBlanc, who is Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, during a recent break from shooting “True Detective: Night Country,” which HBO has said is “coming soon.”
“She’s different than I was, but I think she’s maybe closer to what I wanted to be at that age,” she said. “It’s funny — I’ve been talking to a lot of friends and family through this process, and it feels like I’m taking care of a younger version of myself.
“I’m getting to revisit a young Isabella and maybe do it a little differently, maybe be a little kinder to her.”
Born in St. Paul, LaBlanc grew up on Twin Cities stages. She loves being onstage, she said. But in recent years, the big, nuanced roles for Indigenous actors are on screen.
“All of a sudden, Native stories are not only getting told but getting seen,” she said, pointing to “Reservation Dogs” and “Rutherford Falls.”
As a result, she has been filming in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Montreal.
But Minnesota remains her home. With this new
project — what could be her big break — she not only brings herself, but also, she said, “I bring Minnesota, and I bring my people and my stories with me.”
In 2016, LaBlanc was one of 12 actors picked from 10,000 applications and 450 callbacks for the CBS Drama Diversity Casting Initiative. That’s how she met her Los Angelesbased agent, Kay Liberman, whose sister was a senior vice president at CBS and told her, “I think you should meet this actress.”
“She didn’t have anything to show me,” Liberman said. “She just had this very unique vibe to her.”
In recent years, LaBlanc has filmed the series “Long Slow Exhale” on Spectrum and the “Pet Sematery” prequel on Paramount+. She narrated the audiobook version of “Firekeeper’s Daughter,” a young adult thriller. Then, late last fall, she got the call for HBO’s “True Detective,” set in Alaska and directed by Issa Lopez.
“It’s Jodie Foster doing
HBO,” Liberman said. “It’s major.”
Creating her “True Detective” character, LaBlanc has found herself relying less on studied back stories and more on instincts. That’s partly because she was working at a clip, reading the script on the plane.
But she then discovered another, deeper reason. The culture in which she grew up was comfortable with mystery. But for many years, her acting had aligned with a more Western, empirical way of thinking. She was ready to prove any choice she had made.
But with “True Detective,” she’s turned that switch off.
“Instead, I’m making more space to surprise myself and make choices in a scene that I didn’t expect but come naturally,” she said. “I’m trying to unlearn a bit of schooling and return more to a way of being that is unknown and mysterious and sometimes clunky . ... ”
She smiled and added: “But (it) is a little more interesting.”