New season of ‘True Detective’ takes inspiration from Nome
HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country” is set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska. But Nomeites who tune in to the show when it airs this month may be struck with an uncanny sense of familiarity. Strings of colored Christmas lights hang over the streets during dark nights. Exterior shots of Builders and Board of Trade help establish the setting.
Amid the dramatized Hollywood storylines and supernatural overtones, the show features thematic elements that will be recognizable, too. Viewers will see clashes between a mining company and the local community, simmering anger over unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and characters trying to mend broken connections to their Iñupiaq heritage.
During a call with reporters last month, creator Issa López explained how this setting and story came together.
López, who wrote and directed the 2017 Mexican crime-horror film “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” said that she had the idea to create “a modern Western on the ice.” She found the opportunity to do so when she was approached by HBO to create a new season of “True Detective.”
“True Detective” is an anthology series that got its start in 2014, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson starring as homicide detectives investigating a murder in Louisiana. “Night Country” is the fourth installment of the series. Instead of featuring a male detective duo, the neo-noir stars Jodie Foster as local police chief Liz Danvers working alongside her estranged former partner Evangeline Navarro, played by champion boxer-turnedactor Kali Reis. Over six episodes, Danvers and Navarro investigate the mysterious murder of a team of scientists at an Arctic research station outside of Ennis, and its possible connections to an Alaska Native woman’s unsolved killing.
López said that the moment her idea for the show was approved, she wanted to pack up and move to Alaska. But COVID-19 lockdowns were still in place. So instead, she went on an extensive trip online. She listened to the radio stations in the region. She found YouTube videos of people in Nome, Kotzebue and Utqiaġvik going about their everyday lives—”making breakfast, walking the dog, or going to the supermarket, chatting with their neighbor.” She wrote Ennis as a composite of those three towns.
When travel became possible, López and her team visited Alaska. They first stopped in Nome, but she said there was nowhere for them to stay because the Iditarod was happening. But that day trip here was still influential. López noted that she saw the house by the graveyard where bodies are kept during winter since they can’t be buried in the frozen ground, which was a revelation for her. The team spent more time in Kotzebue, riding snowmachines on the frozen ocean and visiting with families who fed them subsistence foods.
“Even in spite of all the research I had done, there were so many things that I learned in that trip to Alaska,” López said. “Just hearing the stories and having the experience made the series what it is.”
López had initially hoped to film the series in Alaska, but the production turned to Iceland instead because the country had better accessibility and tax credits for the film industry. They found a street in Keflavik, a town west of the capital Reykjavik, that had architecture similar to Arctic towns in Alaska thanks to a U.S. military base built there during World War II.
López knew she also had to understand Alaska Native culture if she was going to base Ennis off towns where at least 70 percent of the population is Indigenous.
“You cannot in good conscience setup a story in this universe if you don’t understand that 70 percent of what you were saying has to do with [Indigenous culture] and has to be about it,” López said. “And it’s not about background, it’s not about creating interesting things to look at it. You’re going to set up a story here, you have to embrace it, understand it and respect it.”
She worked with Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a Neets’aii Gwich’in creative producer and writer for the PBS kids show “Molly of Denali,” and Iñupiaq writer Cathy Tagnak Rexford. Johnson and Rexford helped workshop scripts and assembled an advisory council of Iñupiaq women to answer questions and offer advice during the making of the show.
Johnson and Rexford said in a press statement that they hoped the show would open “a more nuanced dialogue” about diversifying Arctic economies: “We hope that this story brings attention to how our overreliance on the extractive resource industry continues to harm the land and oceans and how it is tied to violence against women.”
The actors, too, had to immerse themselves in understanding this part of Alaska and its culture. Reis portrays an Inupiaq character, though she does not herself have Inupiaq ancestry. She is of Cherokee, Nipmuc, and Seaconke Wampanoag descent.