From a distance, many in Hollywood were wondering just how Issa López landed the show-running gig on “True Detective” season four. The Mexican filmmaker had directed two well-regarded films including 2017’s “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” but she hadn’t worked in American television. She wasn’t an auteur hitting the international film festival circuit. She wasn’t really a “name” in industry circles. How did she get this gig? And then you talk to her. And you immediately get it. And, at some point, you begin to wonder why it took so long for her to rise to this level of influence.
López isn’t just tantalizingly smart and creative (although she’s definitely both of those things). There is an energy and charisma that engulfs the room when she speaks. Even on Zoom, she has a spark that is hard to ignore, and on stage? We witnessed her completely charm a packed theater of Television Academy voters who were initially more excited to see Jodie Foster in person, but likely left buzzing about Lopez instead. If you have been part of this industry long enough, you realize “Oh, she’s going to be a thing. We’re gonna be talking about her for a long time.” And these aren’t exaggerations.
You’ll see.
The good news is even in the context of a print interview you can begin to comprehend López’s appeal. During our conversation in early May, she provided long, fantastic answers to some questions many “Night Country” fans have wondered about. And, usually, a writer’s inclination is to edit those responses as much as possible. Especially in the context of a Q&A format. And while some of her comments have been edited for clarity, it just made more sense to let her wax on about her collaboration with Foster, Kali Reiss, and John Hawkes, transforming Iceland into Alaska, and the streaming success of the season, among other topics. Not only will you understand her talent, but knowing she already has one season under her belt, you’ll be even more excited about her guiding the already-announced season five.
Note: There are spoilers for “True Detective: Night Country” in the context of this interview.
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The Playlist: My first question for you is, was it easier or harder to fake Alaska in Iceland than you thought it was going to be?
Issa López: Easier, yes, because obviously, obviously I did that research in Alaska and went there, and then when I saw Iceland in the scouting, I was like, “Oh my God.” Yes, there’s ice in both, But they’re so different because one is in Scandinavia and the other one is, it’s a little state on the edges of America. Well, it’s not a little state, it’s a massive state, but with a very small population and very specific things. It’s the permafrost in this part of Alaska, so you cannot have underground electricity. So, you have lines that are visible everywhere. And then there’s things that I wrote in the script and I saw in Alaska. People don’t throw stuff away in Alaska because it’s so hard to get stuff there. And everything is clean. There are no power lines because it’s geothermal electricity. And so I was like, “How the hell are we going to do this too?” And I mean credit to my incredible production designer, Dan Taylor, who was like, don’t worry, we’re going to make this work. We’re going to get the power lines, we’re going to get, get the blah, blah, blah.” And when I started to see the sets and walk the streets that we were produced and it was a shock. So, much so that when the Alaskans that we brought to be the show came to set because they flew all the way, and then they get there and it’s Scandinavia and they’re Jet Jetlagged and they walk into the center and they’re in an Alaskan street. They were like, “But how? Oh my God.” And they could recognize the little details. So that was beautiful to see.
When you broke the story what was the toughest nut to crack? What was the one part of it that you really had to figure out?
Oh my God, that’s such a good question. The death of Hank Prior, because I knew that episode five had to end with a death because you have to up the ante and be very clear about what’s at risk here. So I knew that Hank had to die because also he knew too much. And if once we all know what he knows, he would tell us. So, I needed him dead. And at the very beginning, I didn’t even know who was going to kill him. So in my first pass, it was Danvers who killed him, and the more I knew the characters and then the character of Pryor kept growing – he was not the son of Hank in the first passes – the moment that he became the son of Hank I knew. I was like, “Oh, this is such an experience. It’s perfect. He has to kill his own father.” And how do we get a character to that point so you know that this and this and this, and this needs to happen? How do we make it believable? How do we get this sweet kid to shoot his father? So, I wrote a version of that and it felt not great. And then a wonderful writer who helped me with the shape of those episodes, Chris Mundy, the “Ozark” showrunner, and I were going crazy. And Chris gave it a shot and turned it to me, and it was so much better. And I was like, “O.K., this will work.” And then I started rehearsing, and the actors, John Hawkes read it and called me and said, “I don’t think this would work like that.” And I was like, “Damn, that was one of the hardest to figure out.” And John came and explained what he didn’t feel, and he was right. So, we sat in my living room in Iceland and with Jodie and with Finn and with Kali, and we started to go like, “Let’s play. Let’s do the scene and see how it plays.” And we started to dance and understand what was the most important thing. And we figured out that the voice of reason of Dan and John appealing to his feelings, “I am your father. Help me look.” And those two sides of him could drive him to the place. And we had it, and then we got to set and it didn’t work. And I was like, “Do you see this? Let’s do it again.” And we started to play until we found it. We found how it could work, and we believed it. And we found that once we knew the performances could be there, the fear, the shock was real. And the impulses that I needed for Prior to be able to pull that trigger were there. So it was hard, but it was beautiful, and I’m very happy with the result, and I think it’s one of the most accomplished scenes in the show.
So you knew when you were on set it wasn’t “O.K., I think we’ve got this, let’s go into the editing room and put it together.” You were confident even then?
Yeah, yeah. Also for that particular scene, I had an editor on set, so we were shooting and she was cutting.
Did you do that often or was that a one time thing?
Whenever I could, but my post-production happened in London, which, London and Norway are the closest that you can get to Iceland. So, whenever I was able to bring an editor to set, I brought them. But when I knew that it was going to be a challenging scene, a challenging situation, I brought the editor. So yes, having the editor there made a massive difference. And we knew I, I do remember all of us in the monitor and going like, “Oh,” which is so much fun to do.
So this is a mystery. And, in theory, the mystery had to be solved. When you were writing it, did you come up with the ending first and then work backward?
Yeah, the first thing you have to know is what is a crime? What is a mystery, right? So these men vanish, and then why would they vanish? And I started to go through my options and I go like, “This is a sin. A sin was committed and they paid for it.” So what is the sin? And I thought, “Well, this is a bunch of men. They’re in the Arctic. In an area where it’s predominantly native, and we all know that the horror of indigenous women [being murdered. It is] prevalent in everywhere in America, but especially in those areas. And it felt like a natural connection between those two. And the moment that I understood that it was going to be a woman that they had made disappear, I knew that instead of cops finding it and bringing justice and light, it would be the women themselves who took it into their own hands. Because justice can be very slow or never arrives. So, I knew all of that, and that’s all I knew. I didn’t even know who the detectives were, who the characters were [came] later.
You mentioned that John had called you because he had concerns about a scene. How involved were you with your actors like Jodie and Kali in terms of shaping their characters? Did they have a say in where those characters went?
Completely. I do it all the time because it’s so helpful when you give the character to someone and they understand, they start to construct on their own. It becomes so useful when you make a backstory and you talk about the backstory with them, but then they take it, and John, to give you an example, he’s obsessive. He had masses of notes of when Hank was 21, he’s originally from here and he got here and he was in a band and he met his wife here, and he had the names of the whole story. So, he really knew him. And if he calls me and says, “This is not what Hank would say, and this is not what Hank would do,” you have to listen. This is the reason you picked that person [to play this role] because you created a dialogue where you trusted them with a character. And if you trust them with a character, you have to actually trust them. And the same thing happened with, for example, with Finn Bennett. He was in London and we would have a weekly call to say, “Hey.” And John and I would have a weekly call too to say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about what happened with his mother.” And together we would just start speedballing ideas that would inform. And you never stop writing. And then I learned that John had been a musician, and I said, “John, I think that Hank is a musician.” And he was like, “I don’t think Hank is a musician.” And I was like, “Think about it, go away.” And then he would take it. And then he came up with that idea, and it just starts to become this dialogue.
And with Jodi especially, she read the first two episodes, loved them, came back, and said, “I love this. I feel that the character of Danvers is not for me because this is a woman that is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” She read her younger, I think the character was 57 or something like that. And Jodi at that point was 59, which I think is the same age, same. But she was like, she has a teenage daughter. And so we ran the math and we explained that but also she wanted the character to be a lot more of an a**hole, a person that has translated tragedy and the struggle of trying to move in a police system that is male for 30 years and not being ever able to break up the level of her intelligence. So, there’s bitterness and a frustration in the character, and then she suffers tragedy, and the result is she’s a horrible a**hole. I love that idea. And it was not in what I wrote at first, but I adore the idea of taking the opportunity to do that with a female character, what many other shows had done so brilliantly with male characters by turning them into tremendous antiheroes. So, she’s a terrible human being. And that was so much fun. And that in turn changed who Navarro was, because my first draft of Navarro was a lot more of just a badass. But the moment that Julie is an a**hole and you have an a**hole and a badass, so Navarro acquired a heart and a soul and a care for other people that Danvers [didn’t] have. So, all the pieces start to slowly converge and become this chorus of characters. And it’s all from the work with actors.
So this is the fourth season of the show, obviously all the seasons center on Detectives and building a mystery. Did you feel because of the other seasons you had boxes you had to check off to make the show a “True Detective” show?
Well, more than boxes, which was fun, is that I got the option from HBO to take the parts that I loved. And it was like, “What you don’t like, you don’t have to do what is not useful for your season. You don’t have to do take what you like.” And for me, that’s so brilliant. And I loved the idea of the two characters that are profoundly different but profoundly flawed and that have to come together. There’s no way, no way for a single one of them to solve this. It has to be together. And the fact that while they’re trying to solve this, they’re questioning reality and they’re questioning fate, and they’re questioning divinity in a place that has kind of been forgotten by the rest of America. So, I took that and this sinister, dirty, eerie mystery. This ritualistic strangeness and this vibe of the supernatural with a Yellow King and Carcosa. So, those are the elements that I took, and instead of thinking of them as boxes, I thought of them as fun things to do with my story.
While making the show you had to assume there would be an audience Interested in a fourth season. What was your reaction to the fact that it was such a massive hit for HBO?
Well, I mean really, truly the light, because when you’re making the show, you shouldn’t be worrying about this because it’s going to poison what you do. If you start guessing what will work with an audience, what can be a hit, you’re going to f**k up. So, you do the show because it excites you and because it’s fun and because you believe in it. And truly every step of the way [I was thinking], “I would love to see this in a show. If I’m in my home and it’s Sunday, what do I want to see?” So, that’s how we did it, all of us. The beauty for me of working with HBO was that there was never a question. It was the first time that nobody asked me, “Oh, but who’s your core audience?” Or quadrants. It was like story, story, story, character, character, character. That’s their only concern. And that sets them apart from everyone else, I think. And you can see it in the shows they have. And then you never know if it’s going to come together, which is the most panicky part, even if you have the editors there and it kind of works. You don’t know if you’re going to be able to sit from beginning to end and not start thinking about the supermarket or laundry. And that’s a fear in the back of your head. But the moment I finished shooting and I was able to sit down and watch it all from beginning to end, there was a lot of work to do with editing, no doubt. But I could see that there was a show and it was good.
And so HBO started calling because they hadn’t seen anything edited because I was shooting, they were calling and I didn’t have to show them anything for a couple of months. And they started calling, “How is it?” And I was like, “I don’t want to say it’s good, but you [will] like, yeah.” And they were like, “When can we see something?” And I was like, “No, no.” And then eventually I said, “You know what guys? I will show it to you. If you want to see something, I will show all of it back to back. Six hours or nothing, your call.” And they were like, “Really? Because we will jump on a plane and go.” And I was in a movie theater and they came and they sat down and we saw the six hours. There was still a lot of editing that was done, but it was watchable and they loved it, loved it. And so I think that that’s when everybody, including myself, we started to get like, “Oh, this might connect with audiences.” And then you finish the show and then that’s all you can think about. “It’s horrible. Jesus. I hope it’s not a failure. I hope people like it. I don’t know.” So. it’s so satisfying when episode one drops and you are waiting for the ratings, you’re waiting for a sentence, and then they get there and you go like, “Wow.” And then next week, they kept going up and it was like, yeah, it was beautiful.
I know you’re working on the next season. Are you actively breaking it down? Are you still on story ideas?
Yeah. No, I’m writing episodes.
And do you have a goal of when to even shoot that next season? Is it next year or you don’t know?
No, not yet. And another one of the beauties of working with a studio like this one, not with others, is that they’re firm believers in stories and are ready when they’re ready. Which is so beautiful as a writer because then you can really take care to get there. There’s no rush.
“True Detective: Night Country” is available on MAX