“True Detective: Night Country” is the fourth season of the HBO crime series. It’s set in a remote Alaskan mining town above the Arctic circle, during the darkest days of the year – the time when the sun never rises and things get a little weird for the people in the fictional town of Ennis. The show stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. It’s the third acting role for Reis, a former boxing world champion who was born in Providence and grew up in East Providence. Reis spoke with Morning Edition host Luis Hernandez for this week’s episode of Artscape.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Transcript
Luis Hernandez: This is a fun show. I’m really enjoying it. This show uses the elements that we’re used to seeing in a murder mystery, but it mixes in the supernatural. A little bit “X File”-y sometimes. you know. When I’m watching it though, and this is what I love about it, I’m not sure, did I just see something that’s real? Or is that imagined? Is this a dream? Is this supernatural? Your character though, one of the things I love about her is, she seems really comfortable with all the ambiguity with everything that’s going on. And I’m wondering, how do you relate to your character? How do you relate to the way that she deals with things?
Kali Reis: Oh man, Navarro is such an amazing character. She’s such a layered, hard to read, yet very vulnerable, and kind of easy to see where she lands as far as, does she see what’s right in front of her or is she hearing something else as well on top of? So, I relate to my character, right, in a lot of ways. Number one, her being from Iñupiaq and Dominican background, being part of the community but not fully immersed in the community and not full. Coming from Cape Verdean and Wampanoag background, you kind of have that sense of you’re not enough for either or you’re not fully for either. So you kind of have to walk in these two different cultures and kind of see where you fit in. She’s also part of law enforcement, which has different perspectives from the community that she’s actually policing. She has a crave for justice and truth, especially when it comes to the women in the community, especially bringing awareness to the different issues that I’ve chosen … There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of similarities between the two, I don’t just believe in just the rational, just what’s right in front of me. You know, I believe we welcome the dead, to walk among us.This thing, when we pass on, we go on to the other realm, you know, sometimes the veil, as they say, is pretty thin. And there’s a lot of things that can’t be explained, out of our control that I believe has a lot to do with that.
Hernandez: I’m wondering, your experience as a boxer and what you take from that into acting, because these are two very different things. You train for an event, you train, train, train, train, train. Then you have the event. This is: you rehearse, rehearse, but you could be doing a thousand takes to get it right. How do you compare the two?
Reis: Well, with boxing, you can train, train, train, and then the bell rings. And then the whole game plan has to go out the window because I don’t know, you hurt your hand. The opponent fights way different than you thought. You always have to have a tool. So with training, you have a game plan, but you have to sharpen all your tools and you have to be very present and able to make the right decision in a moment’s notice. With acting, I noticed that you can rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, but if you have somebody that brings something way out left, out of the box for a scene, it’s like, you got to think on your toes, you got to react. You gotta be very very present. … It was a lot of, a lot of the same parallels as well as the endurance. Like I go in the gym thinking I’m going to do 10, 12 rounds of sparring, but 20 rounds later, because my coach wants me to do more, I’m just like, all right, let’s go. It’s the same thing. It’s like take after take after take, I know I can do better. I know I can do better. I know I can do better. I can do something different. I don’t have a ceiling. And that’s something that naturally from the years and years and years of boxing that I took into acting. Nobody told me to do that. It’s just kind of something I figured out.
Hernandez: You’re involved in a thing that’s known as the MMIW, the missing and murdered indigenous women movement. And I just want to know, how did you get involved in that? And tell us a little bit more about it.
Reis: So MMIW is a movement that started, I believe, in Canada and then kind of started trickling its way down to … America to highlight and bring awareness to missing and murdered Indigenous women. I first found out about MMIW as a movement when I heard about the highway of tears. I’m like, well, I know of women, of stories, of just our people getting targeted, but there was nothing tangible to put on it. We just know, you know what I mean? … So I just started using my boxing platform to just bring awareness to it. The more awareness, the more people who know, the more we make it a big deal, because it is a huge crisis, that people will start asking questions. … So I just took it upon myself to use the voice that I have to be a voice for the voiceless.
Hernandez: For fans of the show, the thing that’s really cool about this season is that it is so much from the perspective of women, the two stars of the show, you and Jodie Foster. Also it also includes a lot of actors and characters who are indigenous. And I wanted to just ask you a little bit about that, if you could talk about that and how that played out in the story, as well for you in real life.
Reis: I feel like as far as it being two women leads, two women officers, we are able to relate to the characters – I mean the crimes, the victims, a little differently. You know what I mean? it’s just, it’s not, and this is Jodie’s words, it’s not, that could be my sister, my mother, my aunt. It’s like, that could be one of us, you know, as a law enforcement officer who is a woman. And to have Issa López as a woman director, writer, showrunner, I just think it was just a different perspective. It was flipped on its head and it’s reality.
Hernandez: I wanted to ask you about the other aspect of this too, again, because we’re looking at the story of indigenous people. I just heard a story, recently about, again, how Hollywood tends to look at different groups and sometimes stereotypes just jump in, because somebody doesn’t know any better. And so watching this series, I’m thinking it feels more real. It doesn’t feel like stereotypes. It feels more genuine, though I’m going to be the first to admit I don’t know. For you, do you think that the portrayal was more authentic, that they’re getting it right?
Reis: A lot of these stories up until recently have been told, not from us, but for the assumption of what, how they know it is to be us, history. It’s the assumption of “this is what happened” and “this is our interpretation, let’s romanticize it. Here you go. Everything’s great.” Now with this, it was really interesting that … Issa and the team took it upon themselves. … And also had two, two executive producers that were from Alaska, Alaskan Native, and they had a whole council of elders. It was done right. … And to have the two executive producers, Princess Johnson and Cathy Tagnak, which are my sisters now, to go through everything with a fine tooth comb with their elders and say, “This is right. This is wrong. This is not how we would say it. This is what would happen. This is relative.” And also they are part of the land. Their stories are intertwined with this whole story. So I’m just really happy that everybody from the community is proud to see themselves finally in something and not just a one dimensional way.
Hernandez: It has been fun watching, so continued success to you. Kali, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Reis: Thank you so much, it’s been a pleasure. I’m happy I got to do something local, man. I miss home.
Hernandez: Kali Reis plays Evangeline Navarro in the latest season of “True Detective: Night Country” from HBO. All six episodes are currently streaming on MAX.
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