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9 months ago
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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains plot points from the finale of True Detective: Night Country.
HBO’s crime anthology finished its fourth season Sunday with Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) enjoying a rare moment of peace after solving the mysterious deaths of eight scientists from the Tsalal Arctic Research Station in Alaska.
Here, Reis — a relative newcomer who scored this role of the lifetime after making her acting debut in the 2021 film Catch the Fair One — talks about her character’s final hours, what it was like working with showrunner-Executive Producer Issa López, and why she decided to continue rocking her pierced cheeks to play Navarro.
DEADLINE So in the end, did Navarro beat her demons by indulging her desire to walk out of the country and never come back?
KALI REIS I don’t think there was any beating of Navarro’s demons. I think it was more or less walking with them. Once she gives in and really stops trying to fight what she’s been running from the entire time, it gives her peace. So I think she walks with ’em.
DEADLINE What is the primary source of her demons?
REIS It’s not knowing what happened to her mom, not knowing who killed her, along with watching her mom running out after having so many different issues. That’s Navarro’s primary drive behind craving the fight for justice, for truth and what really happened. Then she becomes extremely maternal and protective over her sister as well. Her sister is a second source of that drive.
DEADLINE Why is Navarro off the grid in the very last moment of the season?
REIS Navarro is such a loner, and she hasn’t had time to worry about herself, to really get to know about herself internally, in a peaceful state. It’s always been kind of a survival thing for her. Just like her mom going through a mental state and her having to play mom and big sister for her younger sister.
DEADLINE So what actually happens to Navarro? Does she become a spirit herself?
REIS I left it open. I think her sister was the one thread holding Navarro together. Navarro wouldn’t go all the way off the deep end because she had somebody to worry about. So once she’s gone, there’s nothing else holding her. She can go off the deep end. She can beat the shit out of these guys and not even care. She can just dive into things. So I like to think that regardless of her decision to walk into the ice like her sister does, I don’t think she does that. I think she just goes off into a place where she can be herself without any responsibilities. And if she did either walk into the ice like her sister or stay around, the only person she would ever come back to see, whether it’s in the spirit world or physical world, would be Danvers.
DEADLINE How did this role find you? Did you just audition, do a self-tape like everybody else?
REIS No. This new career that I have, actually just kind of fell in my lap with the first movie I did, called Catch the Fair One. The director reached out to me via Instagram asking if I ever acted before and then it kind of went from there. This came about when a casting director for Issa saw Catch the Fair One and was absolutely floored by my performance. She knew that Issa was looking for somebody to fill Navarro. Issa wanted to talk to me. Issa wanted to kind of get my process with Josef Kubota Wladyka [Catch director] because we highlighted missing and murdered indigenous women. Issa works a lot with highlighting murdered women in her stories of Mexico, and she just wanted to know what my process was if I had one. She told me a little bit about the project. I didn’t realize it was actually for True Detective. So then I found out, got the audition, and I kind of gave it to the universe and was hoping I got it and that’s how I got it.
DEADLINE So you didn’t hear about the Jodie Foster aspect until after you got the job?
REIS Before I got the call that I officially got the job, I heard that they were 90% sure that they were going to cast Jodie as this lead. So I was like, holy shit. I mean, first of all, it’s True Detective, so it’s going to be huge anyway. But Jodie Foster? This is really big.
DEADLINE What’s the source of tension between Danvers and Navarro?
REIS You can tell that at one point they absolutely got along, loved each other. There was like a sisterhood bond there. But I do think because of that bond and because of the whole situation and Danvers knowing how much Navarro absolutely loathed violence against women, there was a sense of protection there. I just think that because Danvers was so logical and she couldn’t understand why Navarro shot [the man in their past who fatally beat a woman] without having an agreement between the two of them, that’s where the tension came from. It just went from there.
DEADLINE When were you told the job may involve a lot of cold?
REIS Well, when I read the script, I was like, ‘holy crap, Alaska.’ I was just like, ‘well, if I get this part, it’s going to be really cold.’ Thank God I grew up in New England. We were outside all the time in the dark cold. If it looks like my nose is red and cold, it’s really red and cold. It actually adds to the realism of the character. You get to feel how these characters would feel in the dark and when it’s cold. It wasn’t a depressing thing. It was an adventure, more or less. I mean, we were prepared for the cold, thank God, but nobody really prepares you for that long, 12-hour shoot in the dark and that Icelandic wind. We had such a communal, family-oriented type of cast and crew. We were all basically cold and miserable.
DEADLINE For as long as I’ve watched TV, I’ve never seen somebody with pierced cheeks. Is this a look that you created for Navarro, or have you been rocking that for years?
REIS I’ve been rocking this for years. I got them done in 2009. When I was cast in this, I thought, ‘this is going to be the part that I’m going to actually have to take these out for.’ But oddly enough, Issa was like, ‘you know what? I love them for you and your face.’ It’s our world. We can do what we want. And oddly enough, fun fact, I actually was on a website looking at different jewelry and they had the history of piercings, and I don’t know how factual this is or not, but it’s just kind of coincidental. The history behind cheek piercings is there’s a tribe of people off the coast of Alaska on an island that uses cheek piercings. They were seal hunters and they pierced the cheeks to make themselves more approachable to the seals because they looked like seals. So if anybody asked, it was a character choice, and that’s what we went with.
DEADLINE Did you know at the beginning how this would end? Did Issa tell you?
REIS No, I didn’t know how it end. I didn’t see it coming at all.
DEADLINE Do you think justice was served at the end?
REIS I absolutely do. It was a great moment too [at the end when Danvers and Navarro sit down with the indigenous women]. You see Danvers giving Navarro the absolute respect to be part of her community that she’s hasn’t been a part of the entire time. She was like, ‘nope, this is the time that I have to have to sit and listen. I have to be the student right now and listen and just accept this and that.’
