True Detective Night Country: Issa Lopez, director of the eerie new drama serial, has lamented Australia’s Voice referendum

An award-winning director, whose eerie new drama serial starring Oscar winner Jodie Foster highlights Indigenous Alaska, has weighed in on Australia’s rejection of The Voice referendum.

Issa Lopez made the comment as she was spruiking new HBO show True Detective: Night Country which she wrote and directed every episode of. A major focus of the serial is Indigenous Alaska.

The fourth instalment of the True Detective franchise Night Country stars Jodie Foster as Detective Liz Danvers investigating a bizarre mass disappearance in the 24 hour darkness of the northern Alaskan winter.

Early reviews have been fulsome with Rolling Stone calling it “must see TV” and the BBC praising Foster’s “bracing” performance.

True Detective: Night Country, which is the two time Oscar winning actor’s first major TV role for almost four decades, debuts on Foxtel and Binge on January 15.

Foster, who achieved international acclaim as another detective – Clarice Starling in 1991 classic Silence of the Lambs – revealed a “pretty gnarly” illness she fell victim to during the constantly cold and dark filming as well as an obsession that kept her going.

‘It is terrifying’

In the show, Foster’s Danvers attempts to track down eight scientists who have vanished from a scientific research station leaving TVs blaring, lunch uneaten and even a body part on the floor.

It’s then discovered there are worrying similarities to the cold case of an Indigenous Alaskan Inupiaq woman who vanished years earlier.

Adding to the unsettling perpetual darkness is the eeriness of the town of Ennis where only a thin boundary seems to separate the living from the dead.

“It is terrifying, because it’s all on you,” Ms Lopez said of her many behind the scenes roles in True Detective: Night Country which also included being the production’s showrunner.

“But it’s also incredible to be able to make all the decisions.

The Mexican director, whose 2017 Spanish language crime-horror film Tigers Are Not Afraid, won 51 awards and has a 97 per cent rating on movie rating website Rotten Tomatoes, said HBO executives were concerned at her level of involvement.

“They said ‘listen, we don’t think you completely understand what you’re getting yourself into. Because every time that a single director has directed every episode of the series, they almost die. They go into crisis’.

“And on top of that, this is in the Arctic.

“But it was a joy (making True Detective). And I was very sad when it ended”.

‘Embarrassment’

A strong element of the series is the region’s Inupiaq history, culture and population. The show features a number of Indigenous actors not just from the US but also Iceland and Greenland.

As production wrapped up on True Detective last October, voters in Australia decisively voted No in a referendum which would have created an Indigenous Voice to parliament.

Ms Lopez said news of Australia’s rejection reached her overseas.

“Yeah, I know, I know (of the poll),” she told news.com.au. “That was an embarrassment”.

For her, it was essential True Detective didn’t just pay lip service to Indigenous Alaskans.

“The more I understood about the towns that I was representing in Alaska, where the makeup is at least 70 per cent Indigenous Inuit, the more I felt it would be completely unfair and stupid to create a show a story where Indigenous characters were in the background or were just the ones with a conflict that the white characters from outside come to solve.”

So much so, Ms Lopez said she changed the ethnicity of one of the characters, Foster’s offsider Evangeline Navarro played by Kali Reis, from a purely Latino character to one who was mixed race Inupiaq.

Reis, a former world champion boxer turned award-winning actor, said it was important for her to properly portray Navarro.

“I’m Native American but I’m not Inupiaq. So I wanted to know how they wanted themselves to be seen on screen.

“I also had the privilege of knowing an Indigenous woman who works in law enforcement in Alaska.

“It was really just diving deep in what it is like to be of that descent in that area and making sure I can tell the right story”.

Foster: ‘Pretty gnarly’

Unsurprisingly, much of the focus of the fourth series of True Detective will be on Jodie Foster.

“She’s the best actor alive, it’s as simple as that,” said Ms Lopez.

“The places she can take a character, the range, the discipline, the depth and the intelligence.

“I think she ruined me as a director, honestly.”

Foster was equal in her praise of Ms Lopez.

“She’s pretty much why I did the show. I had faith in her from the first time that I met her”.

True Detective might be set in northern Alaska but it wasn’t shot there. It was just too challenging to ship in all the equipment needed for a major TV production into such a remote location.

Instead Iceland stood in for Alaska with streets in a town near Reykjavik dressed up to resemble the US’ frozen north.

Just south of the Arctic Circle, Iceland doesn’t dip into weeks of perpetual darkness. But it’s close enough to have just a few hours of weak sunlight during the cold winters.

It was a challenge for Foster and the whole crew with temperatures at one point dipping to minus 23C.

“I did manage to get sick for 10 days. I went down and they managed to shoot around me but it was pretty gnarly,” she said.

“There is something weird about doing so many nights.

“We managed pretty well and I had fantasy football so that helped. No matter how cold and dark it was outside, I always had football,” said Foster.

‘That’s the end of you’

Like Ms Lopez, the Oscar winner said the Indigenous aspect to True Detective: Night Country was vital.

“Not only do we bring people in from Alaska, but we also brought a lot of people from Greenland. And that was really interesting because some of the Greenlanders were cousins to others and they spoke the same languages as those in Alaska because the cultures meet at the Arctic Circle.

“It was really fun watching those cultures come together and share together.”

The landscape, in all its inky darkness, enlightened by little more than car headlights, a few streetlights and the odd Christmas tree, is almost a character in itself.

“There’s a survival mentality where you’re so close to nature in all of its beauty and grandeur and darkness.

“If your car runs out of gas, that’s the end of you,” said Ms Foster.