Kali Reis praises True Detective for tackling issue 'plaguing indigenous communities'

True Detective: Night Country actor Kali Reis is grateful the Sky series, and showrunner Issa Lopez, brought the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women to a wider, more global audience.

The series follows Reis' character Evangeline Navarro and her fellow detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) as they investigate the disappearance of eight men from a research station in Ennis, Alaska. But, the case has ties to a brutal cold case: the murder of young indigenous woman Annie Kowtok, an environmental activist whose story and death, as well as of countless others like her, brings to light something Reis tells Yahoo UK is "plaguing indigenous communities" in real life.

The show's finale reveals not only what happened to the men at Tsalal but also who killed Annie, and for Reis she commended the series for the way it explored the difficult topic: "It's important because it's real. It's not made-up, it's not a made-up issue.

"[Ennis] is a fictional city but it's an actual, real issue that has been plaguing indigenous communities, not just the women. It's our people in general and so I think in the way it's was shot it wasn't romanticising or trying to show it exactly, but the representation of it for somebody who's trying to fight for her people and have justice and do what she thought was right and bringing justice."

The Alaska Native community are 2.5 times more likely to experience violent crimes, and twice as likely to experience rape and sexual assault crimes according to the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022 bill presented to Congress. It also stated that homicide was the third leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Native women between the ages of 10 and 24, and the fifth leading cause of death of those aged between 25 and 34.

In August 2023, law enforcement in Alaska released the names of 280 people who had gone missing, and whose disappearance police believed were suspicious in nature. That's why, for Reis, making this problem more widely known is key and including it in the HBO series felt right.

She explains: "I think it was really important to bring that to life, and because it's on a max scale of this entity, of True Detective, for this particular issue it's in front of an audience that wouldn't normally know about it.

"You talk to the majority of Americans, they don't even know what missing, murdered indigenous women is, they think 'what is that? That's something that really happens?' Yes, this really happens, every single day.

"We can get phone alerts... I get alerts all day, every day, about another missing person, so this is an opportunity to highlight that, I think it was really important."

For López it was a no brainer to explore the issue because she has explored the subject of violence against women for years in her work, and it is particularly important for her because of the similar issue of missing and murdered women in her home country of Mexico.

"I've shot four movies and two of them deal with this subject matter, not with indigenous women because I come from Mexico and the relationship with indigenous identities is different — not better, different. But in Mexico, and in Latin America, there is a very, very brutal epidemic of missing and murdered women.

"In Mexico alone 11 women disappear every day, every day. When I was a kid my mother died in circumstances that were not violent at all, not natural causes, but it was very sudden and I didn't have a chance to say goodbye, and that affected me deeply.

"So whenever I encountered, as I was growing up, these stories of women that are taken from their families, and from their loved ones, and disappear and terrible violence is inflicted on them —and there is never a chance to say goodbye to them, they're taken in that way— I felt compelled to talk about those stories."

López adds that it's a subject she has been looking at "for decades", sharing: "When I get the opportunity of telling a story in the US it's prevalent that it doesn't care for borders, those borders drawn on paper by men don't affect that violence that men inflict on women. So it needs to be talked about, it needs to be talked about until it stops."

All episodes of True Detective Night Country are available to watch now on Sky Atlantic, streaming service NOW and are available to download and own on digital platforms.

Read more:

• True Detective's Kali Reis and Issa Lopez break down shocking Night Country finale

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• True Detective: Night Country review: HBO drama makes relentlessly thrilling return

Watch the trailer for True Detective: Night Country