Issa Lopez (‘True Detective: Night Country’ showrunner) on exploring trauma in the Arctic: ‘Ice is the ultimate metaphor of things that are trapped’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
It was a bit of kismet that Issa Lopez should find herself at the helm of “True Detective: Night Country.” Before serving as showrunner, director, creator, and executive producer of the crime drama, she had already written a murder mystery of her own which centered on an unexplainable murder in the Arctic. “I put it away, as you do with ideas, to let them speak to you. Never gave it a second thought. And then some week later I got a call from HBO,” remembers Lopez. “It was the missing ingredient that just made that flourish.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
“Night Country” centers on the grisly murder of an indigenous woman in Alaska, and how it might be linked to the deaths of several scientists, who are found frozen in a horrifying “corpsicle” outside their research center. Leading the investigation are Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), who clash over tactics and motives, yet are united by trauma they carry.
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Lopez describes trauma, particularly the specific pain after the death of a loved one, as an integral piece of her work. “We carry the death. You don’t shake the people you lose or move out of trauma. You have it with you,” she explains. Danvers and Navarro (and the frosty locale) represent the ways in which we can learn to live healthily with that experience, or allow it to isolate and consume us. “The ice is the ultimate metaphor of things that are trapped in coldness,” continues Lopez, “they are carrying these frozen ghosts that are right there with them, but they’re not allowing themselves to turn around and have a dialogue.”
The opposing ways in which Danvers and Navarro handle trauma also feeds into the supernatural elements of the story. Ghost sightings, phantom polar bears and a mysterious severed tongue crop up during the story. Navarro believes there are otherworldly forces at work, while Danvers sees a logical explanation in everything. Lopez was “careful and mindful of allowing a full line” for a logical or supernatural reading of every mystery in the series. “It’s up to you to decide,” she suggests to her audiences, “but maybe, and this is my favorite, you can take a little bit of both.”
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The showrunner also marvels at the ways in which her two stars found a path of communication. A consistent dynamic isn’t guaranteed when one performer is a veteran with decades of experience and the other is a relative newcomer, and that has the potential to shift the tone of a scene. “The toughest job when you’re directing performers is to even the tone,” explains Lopez. That’s where you really have to keep your ear very, very attentive.” But, she utilized different tactics with each actress in order to get their characters synced. “Once they created a dialogue between the two characters, it was seamless,” admits Lopez, “and I could simply take a breath and a step back and let them do their thing.”
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