Cary Fukunaga Speaks Fondly About Working on True Detective’s First Season

By Reuben Levine | Oct 19, 2015

Cary Fukunaga cannot escape the ghost of True Detective, and it’s likely that he never will. Every interview that he’s come across while promoting Beasts of no Nation has fielded some True Detective questions, some of which gave us some interesting answers. Instead of talking about the possible future, or whether or not he watched season two, this new interview dwells comfortably on the past.

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Speaking with The Huffington Post, Cary Fukunaga seems pleased to talk about his past work on True Detective. He even brings the topic up himself when talking about shooting an infrared scene for Beasts of no Nation:

"“We tried using infrared on “True Detective” as well for Rust Cohle’s hallucinogenic sequences, and we couldn’t find infrared stock anywhere. So I ended up doing a digital effect that mimics infrared.”"

Rust’s hallucinations are a memorable, perhaps underutilized, piece of True Detective’s first season. When asked about he level of scrutiny that True Detective has received, Fukunaga gives a surprising answer:

"“I didn’t really feel any kind of over-scrutiny with “True Detective.” It was more exciting that people were that interested in the details we put into the story…This is such a different genre, this film…It cost about the same as an episode of “True Detective” would cost…”"

It’s good to hear that there wasn’t a sense of critics and viewers breathing down his neck, so to speak. If that wasn’t true for the first season, it’s certainly difficult to say the same for the second.

Moving onto The Alienist, Fukunaga seems relatively chill about the project as well as it being compared to True Detective:

"“Man, I hadn’t even really considered it. “The Alienist” is going to be ultimately compared to “True Detective” only in that it’s going to be a limited series and because it’s another crime series about crimes that involve children…I don’t think I could ever anticipate that because even on “True Detective” I had no idea it was going to get that kind of response. I’m always mildly surprised that people like what I do.”"

The Alienist is still a while off, but he seems prepared to take on the new material. For better or worse, it will end up being compared to True Detective. Finally, HuffPo brings up something that none of the other recent interviews have touched on: crazy fan rumors:

"“My agent is the biggest fanboy ever and reads all the blogs, so he would usually send me stuff along. I kept up that way, but I went to Ghana at the end of February last year, so I didn’t even see the whole rollout of the show…But when I got back, I would see some of the memes and some of the “SNL” and other skits. I thought it was hilarious. It was just awesome to have something you’d done go mainstream like that in the best possible way.”"

Even though True Detective has fallen out of critic’s and some viewer’s good graces, it’s refreshing to to see Cary Fukunaga looking back at his time with the series in a positive light. You can read the entire interview over at The Huffington Post, which we definitely recommend if you want more meat about Beasts of no Nation.

Next: True Detective and Fargo are cut from the same cloth.

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