Writer and director Issa Lopez discusses the tremendous influence that the first season of “True Detective” had on her own interpretation for “True Detective: Night Country”…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
When writer and director Issa Lopez, who was also the brilliant mind behind the breakout horror film ‘Tigers Aren’t Afraid,” was approached by HBO about an idea for a new season of “True Detective,” she couldn’t believe her luck.
Not only had Lopez already been a massive fan of the anthology series but she actually had a story in mind that she had started developing that almost felt like the perfect puzzle piece to fit into the “True Detective” narrative. Once she got the green light to move ahead with the project, Lopez began crafting a story that felt similar in both tone and feel to the first season of “True Detective,” which was a critical and commercial hit starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the lead roles as Louisiana State Police Detectives investigating a cult murder that ultimately drags them into search for the killer that ends up spanning nearly 20 years.
“I had a very hazy general concept of something that I wanted to explore but there were not tacks in place yet,” Lopez explained when speaking to Nerdcore Movement. “I had the world, and the feeling and the mystery of what I had happened to these men. When HBO approached me with the question ‘what would you do with ‘True Detective?’ I thought this is crazy but this is what I would do.
“The moment that I was given the ‘True Detective’ of it all, it became clear that I could take the things that excite me about that first season, the two characters, the focus on the landscape behind them, the supernatural tones and it just completely clicked with what I had.”
“True Detective: Night Country” takes a similar approach to the first season except this time it’s two female leads with Oscar winner Jodie Foster portraying a hardened police chief in an isolated town in Alaska while her partner played by relative newcomer Kali Reis is an indigenous officer seeking justice for an unsolved murder that has haunted her for years.
As she began crafting her own world for “True Detective: Night Country,” Lopez began inserting little connections back to the first season, which fans picked up on immediately.
Early in the season the name Travis Cohle is mentioned and that ties back to the first installment because that is Rust Cohle’s father. There was also a mention about a company called Tuttle United funding the science station at the center of the season — that’s reference to the Tuttle family — a powerful group of influential men including the senator of the state of Louisiana who also happen to belong to the cult that has been committing ritualistic murders for decades.
There’s also the unforgettable spiral pattern that appears several times in “True Detective: Night Country,” which is the same symbol painted on the back of Dora Lange — the victim that ignites the case involving Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. The symbol appears numerous times in the first season of “True Detective” after they discover that as the marker that represents this particular cult.
The spiral symbol is tattooed on Reggie Ledoux — one of the murderers responsible for killing Dora Lange — and it’s also found as a brand on the back of Errol Childress — the “scarred man” that belonged to this cult for decades, who Rust and Marty finally hunt down in the final episode of the first season.
“There’s a bunch of winks to the first season,” Lopez said. “From characters that are related to characters from that first season to the beer they drink to the long drives where the two characters explore their own visions of the universe that are completely opposed to well some things that happen in episode six that you will see in time.
“But it is a love letter to all the things that really worked in that first season.”
Lopez didn’t hide her admiration for everything that creator Nic Pizzolatto pulled off with that first season and she allowed that to guide her when making “Night Country.” It should be no surprise to learn that this latest installment is the best received installment of the show since that first season debuted a decade ago.
“As a fan, because I’m a geek and I’m a fan and I love that first season of ‘True Detective,’” Lopez said. “It’s such a privilege to go here it is, what would you do to continue what this started? It was such a joy to say what I loved about that first season was a whiff of the supernatural, was a relationship between these two men who carry so much horror that they’ve experienced and seen and they’re trying to find a little light around them. Instead, they find more horror and they’re trying to stop it. I loved the idea the backdrop of a world, a landscape, a side of America that we don’t often see, full of secrets and full of a way of life that we’re not used to getting in the rest of the country.
“So if I took that and I put it together, I could change everything and make it my own. I also thought it was a brilliant look into the male psyche. The things that upsets the male mind and I wondered if I could, as a woman, an equivalent for the female experience. The same questions but from the female point of view. Hence ‘Night Country.’”
Lopez will wrap a bow on her season of “True Detective” with the “Night Country” finale that airs on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
