In an exclusive interview withMovieWeb,True Detective: Night CountrystarKali Reisopened up about some deeply personal issues, as she discussed how the Indigenous population have been “forgotten.” During the interview, Reis, who is currently starring alongside Jodie Foster inTrue Detectiveseason 4, explained how, through such projects as the HBO series and her previous filmCatch the Fair One, she is able to tell the stories she feels are important.
“We all have gifts. We all have our own medicine, so to speak, in the indigenous world, and it’s very cathartic to have something and a whole nation of people I’d fight for. Then with storytelling and with acting, you know, storytelling is just a natural way of passing down information, how we’ve done that from generation to generation, and telling our stories the way we need to tell them.”
Therepresentation of the Indigenous populationis very personal to Reis, who is of Native American descent, with the actress revealing that she has in fact experienced family members going missing and being murdered as part of being “forgotten,” as well as facing the dangers of being a “mixed Indigenous woman.”
“Just being a mixed Indigenous woman, being Cape Verdean and Wampanoag, and just being an indigenous person in today’s society where we are the forgotten race, we are the forgotten people, even though we’re the original people of this land. We’re leading in statistics like murder rates, addiction rates, homelessness.
The list goes on and on, and that sense of loss and that genetic genocide that’s been passed on from generation to generation is something real that I experienced firsthand […] I do have family members who have gone missing and turned up murdered. You know, I personally know people who are missing, I know somebody who knows somebody, you know, and our Native community is so tight, close-knit. We as Native people know our Native problem, we call it Indian country, because it’s like a whole different other world.”
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Making True Detective Has Been a ‘Cathartic’ Experience for Kali Reis
For Reis, the art of telling just some of these stories through the likes ofCatch the Fair OneandTrue Detectivehas been a “cathartic” experience, despite the failure to protect Indigenous communities still happening.
“So it was definitely a cathartic process going through this entire journey and telling the story, because I do have personal experience. In my travels to different communities and reservations, hearing their stories and then listening to mine, it was very close and personal, but it was something, again, that is our story to tell. I knew that it was important to get the information out there, because [if] one white girl goes missing in the U.S., it’s plastered all over CNN, but this happens every day to Native women, not just young girls, older women, younger girls, older men, young boys, it happens to our people. And this is something that happens every day. It’s still happening. So we’re not going to get over it. Because things like this still happen, and they’re still happening now.”
True Detective: Night Countryhas proven to behugely popular with both audiencesand critics and is currently streaming on Max, with the final episode due to air on HBO on Aug 17, 2025.Catch the Fair One, which follows Reis as a former boxer named Kaylee who voluntarily joins a sex trafficking ring to find her missing younger sister, can be streamed on AMC+.
