In the midst of a pandemic, Issa López decided to test herself by writing a murder mystery. The writer-director had been working on draft scripts and she was losing her mind a little, she recalls.
While other people might have resorted to doing puzzles with friends, she decided to build her own. “I decided to take on a challenge that I thought was impossible,” she says. “I loved murder mysteries my entire life. “I grew up with a really unhealthy obsession with Sherlock Holmes.” (When I ask her what that means, she tells me to think of a teenage girl with a “truly obsessive crush on a fictional Victorian cocaine addict.”)
“I loved murder mysteries my entire life. “I grew up with an unhealthy obsession with Sherlock Holmes,” says Issa López.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Lopez began concocting a stew that combined his love of Holmes with other pop culture fascinations, including the detective team in David Fincher's “Seven,” the arctic horror of John Carpenter's “The Thing” and a general interest in real life. unsolved mysteries of humanity. She let it boil and then set it aside. Then HBO called her and asked what she would do if they handed her the reins of “True Detective.” franchise.
The result is “True Detective: Night Country,” the fourth season of the series that premiered Sunday, starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as detectives in rural Alaska investigating the circumstances that led a group of investigators to being found naked and frozen together in the vast and mysterious ice. Lopez directs each episode and is the creator and showrunner of this new incarnation of the series, which began with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson weighing in on the notion of time in the Louisiana heat (Nic Pizzolatto was the creator and writer of the first three seasons ). .
For López, originally from Mexico City but now based in Los Angeles, “Night Country” It is her largest and highest-profile project to date and one that is deeply personal, with roots in the trauma she experienced as a child after the death of her mother. It's an experience that has informed his work for years, including his independent horror film “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” a mystical story about children caught in the crossfire of cartels that became his calling card and propelled HBO to knock on your door.
Working with López has been a unique experience for Foster, who says in a phone interview that he has rarely collaborated with someone who has such a variety of skills, from the technical to the more intangible. “[She’s] just deeply emotional and emotionally articulate in a way I've never done with a director,” Foster says.
Before dealing with corpses and mysterious symbols, López made a name for himself in his home country working in comedies, the most commercially viable genre when he began his career. But in 2009, when she tried to make the transition from the Mexican film industry to Hollywood, she discovered that comedies weren't as popular as before. Her attempt to come to the United States failed. “I realized the only way was to go back to my very, very, very dark, fucked-up roots,” she says.
López's mother died suddenly when she was 8 years old. It wasn't a violent death, but it was one in which she never had the chance to say goodbye. She wasn't even allowed to attend her funeral, as the adults in her orbit thought it would be too traumatic for a child to see her mother in a coffin. That lack of closure has followed her throughout her life and her art.
Jodie Foster, left, and Kali Reis in “True Detective: Night Country.”
(Michele K. Short / HBO)
“So you have this feeling, even if you know rationally that this person is dead and gone, part of you hopes to find them around the corner your whole life,” he says. “And I think that informs my storytelling: The feeling of suddenly losing someone who is the center of your life is very much the story of 'Tigers' and it's very much the story of 'True Detective.'”
In “Land of the Night” this manifests as a clash between Foster's Liz Danvers, a pragmatist who buries her feelings of grief over the loss of her son, and Reis's Evangeline Navarro, who struggles with visions of the dead. After the mass of dead scientists is found in what Lopez calls the “corpse,” Danvers and Navarro team up again to discover what became of these men and how it relates to the death of a local indigenous woman and the local mine they Activists say it is polluting the environment.
Lopez, a big “Silence of the Lambs” fan, wrote the role of Danvers for Foster, and although Foster was immediately captivated by the script, she was hesitant to take on the role, worried that she wasn't completely sold. suitable for it. Taking Foster's concerns into consideration, Lopez reformed Danvers. “I'm not going to say this is one of the first times, but I feel like it's one of the best times being heard,” Foster says.
The new version of Danvers that emerged was more of a “jerk,” Lopez says. “It was so natural that a lot of my friends said, 'Oh, now she feels like you.' I thought, 'Thanks, I don't know if that's a good thing.'” She decided to take it as a compliment.
Initially, Lopez had written Navarro as Latina, like herself, but the more she learned about northwest Alaska, the more she knew the series had to address violence against Inuit women. “The more I understood that, at least half of my detectives had to come from that background,” she says. “Because I'm done and I'm tired of police investigators coming from outside looking into the case of the murdered and missing indigenous women.”
Because he began writing when COVID travel restrictions were strict, López's initial research on the region consisted of immersing himself in TikTok and YouTube videos, listening to local radio stations, and watching reality shows like “Life Below Zero.” . As soon as they could, she and a small group of producers took a trip to Alaska, specifically Nome and Kotzebue, where they walked across the frozen ocean and met with residents. “We ate the caribou and we ate the seals that they hunt as part of their culture,” remembers López. “Listen, I don't eat meat, but I did eat meat with them.”
Lopez says he never enters projects with the politics of them in mind, but it became obvious that focusing on the clash between the Inuit community of a northwest Alaska town and the white population was inevitable.
“Her worldview is very broad in scope and I think it affects her personally and deeply,” says executive producer Mari-Jo Winkler.
López did not come close to this incarnation of “True Detective” either. with the intention of subverting the first season, but that too happened. Instead of naked female corpses being analyzed by two men, we see the opposite: two women inspecting naked male corpses. “Now that I look back on it, it's very clear,” she says. But it was not intended to be “revenge.” It just happened naturally. “You don't tell history what to do, history tells you,” she adds.
To write the series, Issa López says she and some of the producers visited Alaska and talked to the native residents. “We ate the caribou and seals they hunt as part of their culture.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Lopez didn't necessarily expect to direct every episode, but having come from the world of independent film where she was involved in every aspect of production, being involved every step of the way made sense for both her and her collaborators like executive producer Barry. Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonlight.”
Jenkins himself has directed an entire season of television with Prime Video's “The Underground Railroad.” “It's exhausting and yet it's also, when you come out the other side, one of the most fulfilling and fulfilling experiences you can have in this creative medium, and I felt like Issa was ready for that. because she is very strong,” he says. “Sorry for my French, but a bad mother…”
Foster says that during filming in Iceland, Lopez, who is very funny, was loved on set. “People just adored her and it made them work harder,” he says.
The session, yes, very cold, was difficult but also beautiful, says López, remembering how they paused the session to take selfies when the northern lights shone above them. Still, he's in no rush to do another project in those temperatures.
As for what Lopez does next, that will depend on how “Night Country” It's received, but she has another television murder mystery in her arsenal. She has liked the genre and she is pleased that, so far, no one who has seen the entire series has told her that they guessed her twist.
“If you look at it, it's there,” he says. “I'm giving you enough so that when I give you the solution you won't say, 'Oh, you fooled me,' but you'll say, 'Oh, I didn't see that.' Because that is very satisfying and that was exactly my ambition when I set out to write a murder mystery.”
Turns out, his pandemic gamble and childhood fixation on Sherlock Holmes paid off.
