My mom, from the time I was little, told me my career would be over by 40. So what do you do after that?’
For Jodie Foster, the answer was to just ‘keep going’. 58 years into her career, she’s currently enjoying a moment only a very exclusive club of actors will ever experience, starring in the first must-see television drama of 2024 in True Detective: Night Country while also eyeing up her third Oscar for Netflix biopic Nyad.
All in all, it’s an excellent time to be Jodie Foster but still it’s clear she doesn’t take anything for granted.
When we meet, Jodie is right in the deep end of promoting the HBO and NOW thriller, the fourth instalment in the traditionally testosterone-driven True Detective franchise in which she stars as racist, selfish and horny Chief Liz Danvers.
‘She’s so awful,’ Josie laughs – and she means it. Danvers is anything but likeable. She wasn’t intended to be quite so unpleasant though, until Foster got her hands on the script – which was written for her in mind. Danvers was in part a creation inspired by Foster’s Silence of The Lambs FBI agent Clarice Starling.
‘I said, “I can’t play this character.” She was written for somebody who’s probably 42 and had just lost a child. She was quite soft in some ways, not able to cope or keep her emotions in check. And I said, “No, I don’t want to play that.”
‘I had to reverse-engineer Danvers to mess her up and make her complicated.’
Despite being the two-time Oscar winner and being the big name to follow the likes of Matthew McConaughay, Vince Vaughn, and Mahershala Ali as the show’s big booking draw, from the get-go Foster recognised she needed to step back for professional boxer Kali Reis to shine as indigenous state trooper, Evangeline Navarro.
The Night Country is set in the fictional Alaskan town of Ennis, opening with the petrifying moment a group of scientists are attacked at their lab and then completely vanish, inspired by a real-life mystery. They’re later discovered in a ‘corpsicle’ – aka an ice block made up of frozen bodies – which is just as gruesome as it sounds.
Novarro is convinced the disappearance is linked to a cold murder case which has haunted her for years but Danvers isn’t convinced.
‘The key thing for me was creating someone that could support Kali’s character who really is the central journey in the story.’
Reis’ casting is an extraordinary tale. She best known as a champion boxer, only starring in an independent film (about a professional boxer) and was discovered for True Detective after being spotted on Instagram.
‘She still holds her title, she still hasn’t retired – an extraordinary woman,’ Foster says, her face lighting up with total admiration.
‘It was a first for her but she’s has everything she needed from the world of boxing; the discipline, the strategy, and the endurance that it takes to be an actor is a similar thing.
‘Maybe that’s better, right? You don’t have these preconceived ideas from drama school. She is really emotionally available and that’s really the key which you can really see that in Novarro. She’s somebody who’s very much in touch with her and her own feelings and with the spirit world and, and that side of yourself is very vulnerable. That’s just magic on screen.’
As the Night Country title suggests, the black sky is another key character throughout True Detective. Ennis is encased in uninterrupted darkness and a relentless freeze for weeks on end.
The teeth chattering and icy breaths weren’t just for effect; the entire cast felt the brutality of filming in Reykjavik, Iceland during its lowest temperatures.
‘It really was that cold,’ recalled Foster. ‘For the most part there moments where you couldn’t even speak where your mouth just doesn’t move so you put warm things on, you could put like these little heating hot pads that attach to your body, but doesn’t matter, you still have to talk and breathe.’
It’s a far cry from the scorching temperatures of the Dominican Republic where she filmed Nyad, the Netflix movie following Diane Nyad (played by Annette Benning), the astounding athlete who swam non-stop from Cuba to Florida aged 64 with sheer determination as well as her best friend and champion Bonnie Stoll (Foster) guiding her to the finish line.
It’s earned Foster her fifth Oscar nomination and could see her picking up her third Academy Award, after taking the prize home for The Accused (1982) and Silence of The Lambs (1992).
