The Emmy nominees dive deep into their freezing-cold shoot and dynamic onscreen relationship.
“Especially because Kali is a great comedian.
She is so funny,” the two-time Oscar winner and first-time Emmy acting nominee says on theAwardistpodcast.
Kali Reis and Jodie Foster in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.Michele K. Short/HBO
“It’s an untapped part of her personality.
And people don’t realize that I’m funny because I choose very serious parts.”
“No, you’re hilarious,” Reis says, interrupting to assure her costar.
Illustration by Zoë van Dijk
“You’re a good hype man.
You put the battery in people’s backs.”
That was so intriguing about my character.
Jodie Foster in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.HBO
My character, as you know, was different when I first saw it.
She was a much nicer person.
REIS:[Laughs] An Alaska Karen.
Kali Reis and Jodie Foster in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.Michele K. Short/HBO
About all the characters.
Like, does it affect her?
So yeah, it was a lot to play with.
Jodie Foster and Finn Bennett in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.Michele K. Short/HBO
So it was really an awesome time to just be able to highlight those different things.
It is centralized around the place, and Navarro is from that place.
I hadn’t realized how funny Danvers was and what a sparring partner she had.
Kali Reis in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.HBO
It’s kind of like a divorced couple that still has feelings for each other.
The way they go at each other is so funny.
Kali, I believe you didn’t know, right?
Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.Michele K. Short/HBO
REIS:I knew the whole story, but I don’t have anything to compare it to.
I’ve never done anything as of yet to not know the whole story.
And it was just like doing a big movie.
Kali Reis and Jodie Foster in ‘True Detective: Night Country’.HBO
So we knew the whole story.
All right, now I know what happened, so let’s focus on the little details.
FOSTER:I think it’s pretty important for the actors to know where the train’s headed.
That being said, stuff happens while you’re shooting.
And I was just… Did you go back and watch it at all?
Is it one-and-done or not at all?
Netflix; FX
It is really a good watch.
I watched it a few times.
I’m not even gonna lie.
Ayo Edebiri on ‘The Bear’; Quinta Brunson on ‘Abbott Elementary’; and Jean Smart on ‘Hacks’.FX; ABC; Amazon
FOSTER:Yep, me too.
I’ve been really enjoying watching it again.
And then instead of being in the other room or something, I ended up just sitting there.
Elizabeth Debicki on ‘The Crown’; Christine Baranski on ‘The Gilded Age’.Netflix; HBO
REIS:Oh, it is?
I’ve never seen it!
Yep, it’s there!
Ebon Moss-Bachrach on ‘The Bear’.FX
FOSTER:Well, I have been directing in streaming, and it is the golden era of streaming.
So I feel very lucky that I’m born at this time and able to do streaming.
This was the first one that I really wanted to commit to.
And it is a big commitment, right?
So it’s a little different than doing a feature.
You meet with the showrunner, but you only get to see maybe one episode before you say yes.
So you have to really trust people.
I want to talk about how each of your characters is introduced because I love the details.
Jodie, when you first read that scene, what did it tell you about Danvers?
FOSTER:Oh gosh, well, every detail is so Danvers, right?
But also that she really loves to get under Hank’s skin.
[Laughs] And he’s not the only one.
All those details are right there and fun.
It gets fun to watch somebody be a jerk.
and then she has to physically take down a large dude on her own.
Sheryl Lee Ralph during her win at the 2022 Emmys.Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty
So it’s like she’s got it coming at her from both sides.
Kali, same question: What did that first scene tell you about Navarro?
She’s the only officer on scene.
She’s telling this guy who owns the place, “Have a seat.”
And also, she is Native but she’s not really part of the community.
And then also, she can handle herself.
She has a six-foot-four guy that she has in her hand and answering the phone.
FOSTER:Answering the phone!
REIS:“I can’t talk right now.
Give me a second, hold on.”
So there was just a lot of that.
She’s very confident.
She has attention to detail, she has patience.
She’s maybe not acknowledged much with the community that she surrounds herself by.
There’s a lot.
This is an introduction and it’s the first character we get to meet in the whole series too.
It’s really this place and these people.
So in both of those introductions, there’s a lot of humor to them.
How does being part of a female-centric project change your experience on set?
It’s done really well.
So it was like a sign for me: This is where I belong, doing this right now.
I was really proud of it.
I was really proud to see how successful it is.
It wasn’t just like it’s only successful because people are giving it a pity watch.
“I’ll watch it because it’s all these women.”
It’s a really, really good story.
And it just so happened a bunch of badass women are involved in it.
So I’ve really genuinely been here for the switch.
And now, the last five movies I’ve made, it’s all been women.
Women police officers have a different connection to those victims.
Men are thinking about saving their daughters and thinking about saving their spouses or their moms.
We’re thinking about saving ourselves.
So we relate to the victims in a different way in this iteration.
I’m super proud of it.
Weve got to talk about those filming conditions.
You filmed in Iceland, 49 night shoots.
Some nights were -23 degrees below zero.
How does that feel?
FOSTER:It was worse for Kali than for anybody else, because she had the worst days.
You did have the worst days, and the most outside days.
REIS:I did.
But the locals definitely schooled us on what materials to wear where, how to wear things.
We were layered up.
Thank God we were playing police officers that were used to elements.
And the cold was cold, but we didn’t have to fake it.
We didn’t have to be like, “All right, now I’m in the Arctic.”
We were in the Arctic.
And it was dark.
It was a character itself.
And at 2 a.m. night shoot, we get to look up and there’s the Northern Lights.
FOSTER:And we had our guides.
We had our Native people who came from all over the world.
So First Nations from Canada and Inuit and Inupiaq people from Alaska, and then people from Greenland.
And she was like, “Yeah, this is nothing.
This is nothing.”
REIS:Yeah, “This is nothing.”
It’s negative 20.
Yeah, they’re built different.
Those conditions are brutal.
We know when we drink our seal oil, we know that we can handle the cold."
You both come to this project from very different career backgrounds.
FOSTER:Well, Kali is a much harder worker than I am.
Kali had the whole thing in her head.
And then I’d have to do some work about it.
Like, I’m not sure Kali understands that everything else is a lot easier.
REIS:I think that’s been the theme of my life, which has actually been a blessing.
I do everything bass-ackwards, I call it.
I always do the harder thing first.
“If I can do this, I must be able to do the next thing.”
I’m like, if Jodie Foster is saying this, then I am screwed.
It’s week two and I was like, oh no!
I know I did everything to get here, so just relax don’t take everything so serious.
You’re going to forget lines; it’s cool because we have sides everywhere.
Look, I put it behind the polar bear.
You’re supposed to be here, have fun with it.
And I knew that, but it was a reassuring thing.
And from there I was like, cool, all right, I don’t have to perfect everything.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to Foster and Reis' full interview onThe Awardist, below.
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