Oscar winner Jodie Foster says she was drawn to “True Detective: Night Country” in much the same way she was “Silence of the Lambs” over 30 years ago…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Jodie Foster definitely knows when she’s found something that she likes.
The multi-time Oscar winner has championed a number of award-winning projects during her enormous career and her latest involvement in “True Detective: Night Country” gave her similar vibes as the first time she read Thomas Harris’ iconic novel “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Of course, Foster’s most famous role might still be in that iconic 1991 film that took home every major award at the Academy Awards including hers for Best Actress as well as Best Picture, Best Director for Jonathan Demme, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ted Tally. Foster says she fell in love with “The Silence of the Lambs” the first time she read the book and the experience was almost exactly the same when she read Issa Lopez’s take on the new season of “True Detective.”
“I knew the second I read the book for ‘Silence of the Lambs’ I ran around trying to figure out how I could buy it so I could produce it myself,” Foster told Nerdcore Movement. “I knew immediately. Once Ted Tally wrote that first draft, that was pretty much the draft that got greenlit that we made. Once Jonathan Demme came aboard, he brought on everybody else and everyone said yes, yes, yes. We did the best work of our life.
“I think there was like a magical component to that and it all came from the text, from that Thomas Harris novel. Same thing with [‘True Detective: Night Country’]. The first episode, I think by page 35, I was like yes, this is it.”
Once the pieces started falling in place to make “The Silence of the Lambs,” Foster and company were able to create one of the most critically acclaimed films of the past 50 years.
She says the process with “True Detective: Night Country” came together the same way, which wasn’t necessarily what she expected considering this was a TV show versus a major feature film.
“All the dominoes kept dropping from Issa on,” Foster said. “Everybody kept saying yes, including HBO, who have been so supportive. I’ve worked with streamers before that are difficult to handle. We had a really charmed experience and that’s because the text was there.”
Of course, Foster brought her own take to Clarice Starling — the rookie FBI agent tasked with probing Hannibal Lecter in an attempt to get closer to catching a new serial killer named Buffalo Bill — when making “Silence of the Lambs” and the same care was brought to portraying police chief Liz Danvers. In fact, Foster actually thought at first that the part wasn’t necessarily for her but she was able to find herself through some reworks with Lopez before shooting began.
“I got the first episode and I was like this is so intriguing and amazing,” Foster said. “It’s an incredible script and this woman has such vision but I feel like the character’s wrong for me. So I really needed to get in there and say ‘I don’t know if I’m the right person for this’ but if it is me, this is what is what I was hoping for. I think that helped inform how we moved forward.
“Issa had an idea what all six episodes were but they weren’t written until we started collaborating together. Those little canals start narrowing. When I got to episode six, I could not believe it. For me it’s my favorite episode of all of them.”
The sixth and final episode of “True Detective: Night Country,” which airs on Sunday night on HBO, brings the series to a culmination along with the investigation of who murdered the scientists at the Tsalal Research Station just outside Ennis, Alaska.
Foster promises that all questions will be answered with this episode, which she clearly adores.
“There’s a cinema to episode six, where suddenly everything in the entire season made sense,” Foster said. “But we did need to go back and fix five, four, three, two and one because when you get to the end you’re like that’s what I was going to say!.”
There’s little doubt that Foster will almost certainly earn some award nominations for this role much like she did for “Silence of the Lambs.” But first things first, she’ll watch how “True Detective: Night Country” unravels towards its conclusion with the series finale on Sunday.
