True Detective: Night Country creator on how she pushed boundaries for season 4
Issa López lifted the lid on how she approached the latest season of True Detective and the challenges of telling a female-centred, non-white story.
The True Detective finale has landed on Sky Atlantic and NOW, bringing the crime drama's latest to an end.
The conclusion to Night Country, which saw Jodie Foster and Kali Reis pick up the mantle from season 3 stars Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, has been quite the departure for the series. Not only has it woven supernatural elements into the story, but it also centres on two female detectives for the first time, as well as elements of different Native American cultures.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press, showrunner Issa López opened up about how she intentionally pushed those boundaries to deliver her vision, and how she took a step back when it came to the series' Native American representation.
"All you have to do as an artist is get yourself out of the way of things. And I was able to get myself out of the way of that root and that story to get to the screen, and not mix my story, my ego, my vision, my aim in that part," she said.
"The series is many other things, and I could put myself in those. The parts that are not mine, I could simply step back to let them go through and keep the screen. And that makes me very proud."
She added: "But the other part that I think is important is [that] this ended up being a mission of pushing boundaries. It is a mission of saying you can turn a male-centred story that is very successful into a female-centred story. You can turn a very white story into a very non-white story.
"There's nothing you cannot do... You can do it and you can make people sit down and watch it and enjoy it. And some of them [will] be mad at it but still watch it. [You can] make a noise with it and have an impact."
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López also opened up about where the idea for Night Country came from, and how much of it she had prepared before HBO got in touch with her.
She explained: "I wanted to do a murder mystery in the ice. And I had some elements and a collection of incidents that have happened with unsolved mysteries, and it was a bubbling soup of ideas in the middle of the pandemic.
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"And then I got the call. And the call was 'What would you do with True Detective?' and I was like, 'I remember that soup'. That's what happened. So because it was so flexible and so mouldable and so young, it was very easy. "
López also went on to stress the importance of the setting on this season, saying: "The centre of it all, which was the Arctic, was the absolute answer to 'What would you do with True Detective?'
"We have seen True Detective in the Bayou in Louisiana, we have seen True Detective in Los Angeles. You have seen it in Arkansas. So where are you going to take it? To the ice. And once you do that the rest starts just connecting."
True Detective: Night Country premiered on Sky Atlantic and NOW on Monday 15th January 2024. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.
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