Digging for the truth is the name of the game when it comes to True Detective,
but here are some secrets that even the most diehard fans may not have uncovered yet.
Matthew McConaughey took his role as one of the leading stars and
executive producers of the first season of HBO's True Detective
seriously. Following McConaughey's powerful performance in 2011's The Lincoln Lawyer,
show creator Nic Pizzolatto saw the potential for McConaughey's involvement in the series as the
character Rustin Cohle, acting alongside Woody Harrelson and Michelle Monaghan.
"I mean, it's like something's just got your name on it, like a bullet, or a nail in the road."
Cohle is a complex character who could easily alienate an audience with his nihilism and apathy,
so it was essential for McConaughey to fully embody the deep pain of this
character. He arguably managed to do so by extensively analyzing Cohle's identity to a
fundamental level. According to an interview with Rolling Stone back in 2014, McConaughey
explained his need to create a document to chart his character's life and growth over the 17 year
timeline depicted in Season 1. He broke Cohle's essence down into four stages: 1995, Crash, 2002,
and 2012. Each section contained its own lengthy analysis of the character's state of mind at
each time period. The result was a 450-page graph titled Four Stages of Rustin Cohle.
It's common for many television shows not to have multi-season arcs planned out from
the very beginning and — as a result — they can lose direction. True Detective didn't have this
problem, as Pizzolatto always intended the show to be an anthology with new casts and
stories every season, much like Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's FX series American Horror Story.
The strength of an anthology format comes from creators exploring vastly different stories while
maintaining an overarching theme and tone. While the characters and setting change,
each season follows the same basic format: two detectives investigating crimes that lead to the
discovery of some wider conspiracy or mystery. The second season cast Colin Farrell and Rachel
McAdams as their duo — with a notable performance from Vince Vaughn as a career criminal — while
the third season had Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff. However, in an interview with Entertainment
Weekly, Pizzolatto claimed that he initially began writing the story that eventually became
Season 3 as a new project, only to realize that it fit the themes of True Detective.
"I can understand your frustration with the disease."
"A disease you can't even say what it is."
"We can say what it almost certainly is."
But the anthology format doesn't sit well with all fans, with some missing the chemistry
between Harrelson and McConaughey, and Season 2 overall receiving lukewarm critical and audience
receptions. Although most fans and critics agree that Season 3 was something of a return to form,
no matter how each season fares on their own merits, the deliberate variation
provides fresh interest while preserving Pizzolatto's dark, atmospheric style.
It hasn't always been smooth sailing for True Detective. While the first season was hailed
as a towering achievement of episodic television, the second and third seasons struggled to live up
to the hype. But one of the more troubling developments for the show occurred during
production of the second season after the departure of Cary Joji Fukunaga,
the first season's director. The hole left by this major change forced HBO and Pizzolatto to search
for other artists to direct episodes throughout the next season, and ended up splitting the load
between six different directors, which included Justin Lin, Daniel Attias, and Miguel Sapochnik.
Some even bigger names were approached early on but, for one reason or another,
they declined the offer to helm an episode. The biggest of these filmmakers was horror icon
David Cronenberg, best known for creating classic films such as Scanners, The Fly, and Videodrome.
According to Vulture, Cronenberg was approached to direct, but refused, saying,
"...I thought that the script was bad, so I didn't do it. In TV,
the director is just a traffic cop, but on the other hand it is work and there's a lot of it."
What began as a working relationship between two actors has reportedly grown into a deeply genuine
friendship between McConaughey and Harrelson. The lead actors and executive producers on True
Detective played two diametrically opposing partners who slowly grew to understand,
respect, and maybe even like each other as the story unfolds. This combative
relationship between Rust Cohle and Marty Hart was apparently difficult for them to
find when filming began because of their existing relationship.
"Yeah, I didn't even know I'd hit him the first time. He was like 'yeah,
good one. Yeah, nice one.'"
"Let me get this."
True Detective was not the first time these two actors worked together, with them sharing
screen time in the lighthearted comedies EDtv and Surfer, Dude. According to USA Today,
McConaughey and Harrelson had to focus on breaking their existing off-screen dynamic so
that their characters could be appropriately hostile to one another. Harrelson claimed,
"Not being on the same wavelength aided what it was we were doing, but it was also uncomfortable."
True Detective doesn't shy away from the grimmest aspects of true crime,
with every season's underlying themes encompassing almost an otherworldly
evil. Season 1 heavily references aspects of occultism behind the murders at the show's center,
with creator Nic Pizzolatto directly referencing horror author Robert W.
Chambers' book The King in Yellow to create the series' eerie atmosphere and plot.
Some key terms and phrases from this relatively obscure piece of 19th-century supernatural horror
are peppered throughout the first season, with the unknown killer Rust and Marty hunts known as
the Yellow King, who lives in a dark place called Carcosa. These are lifted directly from the novel
about the evil entity known as The King in Yellow, as well as a lost city named Carcosa — itself
borrowed from an even older short story by seminal American author Ambrose Bierce. But Chambers was
also a strong admirer of H.P. Lovecraft, so his work was heavily infused with a similar
sense of cosmic dread. This, in turn, inspired Pizzolatto during his series' development.
In an interview with EW, Pizzolatto directly addressed how the horror elements of Chambers'
book changed his writing process, claiming,
"When I did that, a kind of secondary language began to form in the scripts,
where the notion of cosmic horror became a very real part of the environment."
While most television shows and movies are filmed and presented digitally these days,
some notable exceptions continue to opt for old-school film. Acclaimed filmmakers like
Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Christopher Nolan all eschew digital in
favor of film. According to an interview with Cinemablend, Tarantino claimed,
"If you're not doing the work to get a great shot,
then what's the point? Digital cinematography puts all the heavy work in the post-production
rather than planning and attempting to get the perfect shot while on set."
Fukunaga and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw chose to shoot on 35mm film for all eight
episodes of Season 1, which made it much more difficult to get some of
the more complex shots in the show. Unfortunately, it looks like this may
exclude that famous six-minute tracking shot in the episode "Who Goes There?"
"Come out with your hands raised!"
"Get down on your knees!"
During an interview with Variety,
Arkapaw touched on the challenge of filming a show this way. He said,
"In a film, you might be accustomed to shooting two to three minutes of screen time a day. On
True Detective, we were shooting five to six minutes every day. Basically,
your time to devise, prepare and execute your work is cut in half."
Many fans and critics agree that the extra effort was worth it,
with Season 1's visual richness being a big part of its overall appeal. Sadly — according
to PremiumBeat — subsequent seasons weren't so lucky and were shot digitally.
The second season of True Detective brought in an entirely new cast of characters in a
completely different location, with arguably mixed results. While critics didn't seem to appreciate
the supposed decline in writing and story, they acknowledged the strong leading performances of
the many cops and crooks operating in Los Angeles. This included Rachel McAdams as Ani Bezzerides,
Vince Vaughn as Frank Semyon, and Taylor Kitsch as Paul Woodrugh. But the actor who seemed to
make the most waves among the cast was Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro — a dirty
cop torn between his desire to do the right thing and his criminal loyalties.
"I remember you dumping a body."
"The reasons for all this, all that, might not exist for me anymore."
Farrell has had a long and eclectic career, playing a wide array of characters in movies
like In Bruges, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and The Batman. At the time
he was added to the True Detective cast, he was most often known for playing comedic,
charming rogues. But after being cast as the alcoholic, deadbeat detective,
Farrell had to change his body to match. According to ET, the actor gained roughly
20 pounds prior to filming and hated every second of it. Farrell claimed,
"People think it must be fun to eat what you want — and it is,
for the first day {...} Day two, when you're already on
your second cheeseburger and fries with a chocolate shake by 11 a.m., not so much."
Given the success of Season 1, many thought that Pizzolatto's writing
and Fukunaga's directing were a match made in heaven. However,
the pair reportedly didn't get along well during production. In the past few years,
Fukunaga has gone on record explaining how the working partnership between him and Pizzolatto
deteriorated as the show went on. During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he claimed,
"Over the course of the project,
Nic kept positioning himself as if he was my boss and I was like, 'But you're not my
boss. We're partners. We collaborate.' By the time they got to postproduction,
people like [former HBO programming president] Michael Lombardo were giving Nic more power.
It was disheartening because it didn't feel like the partnership was fair."
It seems that this tension was one of the reasons Fukunaga did not return for season
two or three of True Detective, though he did retain his role and credit as executive producer.
Some claim that one of the unsung heroes of True Detective is actress Alexandra Daddario
as the character Lisa, a court stenographer and Marty Hart's mistress in 1995. While Lisa and
Marty's secret affair becomes increasingly toxic, Daddario brings genuine empathy,
complexity, and depth to a character who easily could have been written off as superficial.
"Go away. I'll call the cops."
"Well, let's see how that works out for you."
"I know other cops."
"OK."
"Get out!"
However, her character being highly sexualized led
to Daddario's apprehension about filming her first-ever nude scenes for the show.
According to a 2014 interview with MTV,
the actress explained just how difficult it was to prepare herself for her scene,
"I really wanted to be part of the show, and I understood why the nudity and all
of that was required of the character {....} The character is really different
from anything that I've done before. The nudity was just part of that."
Fortunately, Daddario claimed that the cast and crew helped put her at ease,
with Harrelson in particular making the whole interaction very comfortable for her.
Although it's hard now to imagine Rust Cohle played by anyone else,
it turns out that the casting was originally going to be flipped, with McConaughey slated to play
Marty instead. At this time, McConaughey was mainly known for his comedic roles,
going all the way back to his breakthrough role in Richard Linklater's Dazed and
Confused. While he'd already branched further out with more serious roles,
he was still seen as a jovial performer who would fit better as the more light-hearted Marty Hart.
During an interview with WNYC in 2014, McConaughey talked about
his experience being brought in by HBO to read for Marty. While he was intrigued by the show,
it was actually Rust Cohle's dialogue that piqued his interest. He said,
"The guy I can't wait to hear what comes out of
his mouth every time I turn the page is this guy Rustin Cohle."
Once McConaughey realized how badly he wanted to play Rust instead of Marty,
he apparently laid it out to the showrunners, saying,
"I read the first two episodes and said, 'Look,
I like the role of Cohle. If you guys are interested in me for the role, I'm in.'"
He was ultimately right, considering his performance in True Detective received some
of the highest praise he's ever gotten from audiences and critics throughout his career.