The fourth season of the blockbuster anthology series True Detective is here, and this time around the action is relocating from mainland America to the frigid winter ice of the Arctic Circle. In the town of Ennis, Alaska, something dark is stirring, as eight scientists have mysteriously gone missing from their research facility. Is something dark afoot? Of course it is.
With Jodie Foster at the helm of the show playing Detective Liz Danvers, the series already promises to be exciting – but she’s also backed up by a stellar supporting cast, many of whom are also familiar faces.
Liz Danvers, played by Jodie Foster
Liz Danvers is one of the two main characters in True Detective: Night Country. She is a Detective with the Ennis police force, sent up north after falling out with her former bosses elsewhere. She’s also a bit of a live wire: prickly, aggressive and traumatised from several undisclosed events in her past. She’s also a reluctant stepmother to the equally reluctant Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc), the daughter of her late partner.
Who is Jodie Foster?
Jodie Foster has been a Hollywood icon for over fifty years. Born in 1962, Foster was a gifted child – she learned to read at age three, speaks fluent French (she often overdubs herself in films she appears in) and attended Yale University, where she studied African-American literature.
She started acting at a young age, initially starring in commercials and then moving onto TV shows like Paper Moon (the last TV series she starred in before True Detective) and Disney films. "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!'” she told The Sun-Sentinel newspaper. “I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
She had her big break when she was just 12 years-old, after Robert de Niro cast her as a child sex worker in 1976’s Taxi Driver (for which she won an Academy Award, and two BAFTAs). In 1991, she went onto achieve massive critical and commercial success as FBI agent Clarice Starling in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs (Foster later revealed that she had attempted to purchase the film rights to the novel herself, after reading it in 1988).
Since then, Foster has mixed acting with directing – she directed the episodes Lesbian Request Denied (2013) and Thirsty Bird (2014) for Orange is the New Black, and Chapter 22 (2014) for House of Cards.
Evangeline Navarro, played by Kali Reis
Navarro, Liz Danvers’ opposite number, is a State Trooper who is based in Ennis. She is of Indigenous Inupiaq heritage and has a younger sister who struggles with her mental health. Navarro is also a wild card: she was moved from the police force to the troopers after a former job went wrong, but she is still trying to solve the murder of Indigenous woman Annie K, who was found mutilated on the outskirts of the town some years back.
Who is Kali Reis?
Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1986, Reis is of both Cape Verdean and Native American heritage – specifically Cherokee, Nipmuc, and Seaconke Wampanoag.
"My mom raised me as a single parent and we attended… Native pow wows regularly,” Reis told sports website WBAN. “Everyone in my family is involved with either sports or music or both. I grew up a rough, tough and determined girl; playing tackle football with all the neighbourhood boys, wresting, fighting, building forts and anything else that would potentially get me hurt or in trouble!"
Reis started boxing at around 14. Initially coached by her mother’s friend Domingo ‘Talldog’, she had a brief amateur career before going onto win three world titles – including the WBC World Female Middleweight belt. She fought under the name K.O. Mequinonoag – Mequinonoag being the Native American name "given to me by my mother, she is the medicine woman of our Seaconke Wampanoag tribe. It means ‘Many Feathers’, or ‘Many Talents’.”
Reis ventured into filmmaking via her support for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls movement. Filmmaker Josef Kubota Wladyka asked if she would collaborate and star in upcoming film Catch The Fair One – for which she received critical acclaim. Following that, she was cast in thriller Black Flies, which starred Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan. True Detective is her third-ever acting role.
Rose Aguineau, played by Fiona Shaw
Rose Aguineau is a mysterious woman who lives on the edge of Ennis and acts as a mentor figure of sorts to Navarro over the course of the series. She has a penchant for cigarettes, knows an awful lot about how to survive on the ice (the showrunners describe her as a “survivalist”) and also has a habit of seeing her dead lover return to her as a ghost. Is she mad? Probably not: this is Ennis after all.
Who is Fiona Shaw?
Another heavy hitter, Fiona Shaw has been a mainstay of British film and television for years. Born in 1958 in County Cork, she graduated from RADA and went onto have a successful stage career – which included playing the male lead in a 1995 production of Richard II. She’s appeared in films as diverse as Harry Potter (as Aunt Petunia), Persuasion, Jane Eyre, Three Men and a Little Lady, and The Black Dahlia.
Recently, she’s also enjoyed something of a TV renaissance. Cast as MI6 chief Carolyn Martens in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Killing Eve, she then appeared in Fleabag as the Counsellor and in Star Wars series Andor as lead character Cassian’s adoptive mother Maarva.
Ted Corsaro, played by Christopher Eccleston
Ted is Liz’s boss. Described by the showrunners as the “regional chief of police and a political animal”, he’s running for mayor – and also happens to be sleeping with Liz on the regular.
Who is Christopher Eccleston?
Born in Salford, Lancashire in 1964, Christopher Eccleston was first inspired to become an actor when he was 19 after watching TV shows about working-class communities like Boys from the Blackstuff. After graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama, he made his stage debut at 25 in the Bristol Old Vic’s A Streetcar Named Desire.
Since then, he’s become a TV and film regular, appearing in shows like Cracker, Second Coming and Shallow Grave. His breakthrough was arguably the BBC 2 drama Our Friends In the North, which he appeared in alongside Mark Strong and Daniel Craig. In 2005, he helped reboot Doctor Who by starring as the Ninth Doctor, with Russell T Davies as showrunner – a role he stepped down from the same year after considerable acrimony between himself and the producing team.
“Yes, I have felt bitter, and yes, I have felt betrayed, but I know also that Doctor Who was the best thing that, professionally, ever happened to me, not so much a learning curve as a plunge down a well and a long climb towards the sunshine I see now,” he wrote in his memoir.
Leah Danvers, played by Isabella Star LaBlanc
Leah is the stepdaughter of Liz Danvers. Liz was once married to Leah’s father, but by the time the show starts, he’s dead and she is now Leah’s sole guardian. Of Inupiaq heritage, Leah’s attempts to find out more about her culture are constantly being thwarted by Liz, and the two spend much of their relationship at loggerheads.
Who is Isabella Star LaBlanc?
LaBlanc is a Native American actor based in Minneanapolis. Of Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota heritage, she has appeared on stage (among other places, for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC) and has written her own works on Native American culture and history that have been performed onstage.
“I come from a family and a community of activists,” she told the DC Theater Arts site. “I’ve grown up around people on the front lines, and I know that I’ve been able to live the life that I live as a proud Indigenous person because of activists that have come before me and that raised me.”
Peter Prior, played by Finn Bennett
Peter Prior is another police officer working in Ennis. Married to an Indigenous woman, he struggles to balance his home life with the demands of his boss, Liz Danvers. He has a fraught relationship too with his father Hank, who also works in the police force.
Who is Finn Bennett?
Not much is known about Finn Bennett, but he’s a British actor who’s previously appeared on stage at the Royal Court Theatre opposite Lesley Sharp (in 2019 play The Woods), in 2021 HBO series The Nevers and in Top Boy.
Hank Prior, played by John Hawkes
Hank is Peter’s father, and also works at the Ennis police force. The two have a troubled relationship – Hank’s wife, Peter’s mother, died some time ago, and the father and son don’t often talk. Hank is also desperately lonely: unable to communicate with his son, he’s in a long-distance relationship with a mail-order bride who may or may not be a scammer.
Who is John Hawkes?
Born John Perkins in 1959 (he later changed his name due to there being another John Perkins working as an actor), Hawkes was raised in "a midwest Scandinavian community" before moving to Austin, Texas in his teens. Heappeared in 2011 film Winter’s Bone (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), the 2012 film Lincoln and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).
