When Issa López was looking for the right actor to play Evangeline Navarro, one of the two central characters in True Detective: Night Country, she knew she had to find an actor who could embody strength, sorrow, and vulnerability.

Previously the series had always cast two well-known movie stars opposite one another in the detective roles — Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrellson of season one, for instance — but López wanted to break the mold and cast someone who felt authentic for the role opposite star Jodie Foster.

“I talked to my casting director, Francine Maisler, and I said, ‘Is there anyone that we can find that has the strength and the power?’ And as I was speaking, my computer went ‘ping.’ She had sent me a photograph of Kali, who was getting buzz because her movie had come out, Catch the Fair One. And just looking at her face and her body and her gravitas and presence and power, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that is Navarro.”

López watched the 2021 movie that night, in which Reis portrays a former champion boxer who searches for her missing sister. “It blew me away because even though that character in that movie is a lot closer to Kali, so it required less acting, I could see the potential,” says the director. She met with Reis and made an audition tape, which she then took to the network’s executives.

“I went to HBO and I said, ‘Guys, I know True Detective is two stars, but….’ And they were like, ‘Wait, who are you thinking of?’ And I think that they were ready to go into an argument, but the moment that they saw her, they had the same reaction. They were like, ‘Oh, this woman is a star.’ They said, ‘Issa, if you see this happening, we’re one hundred percent behind you.'”

Jodie Foster still had to give her blessing. López sent the Academy Award-winning actor the tape, and “Jodie immediately wrote back and said, ‘Who is this woman? Where did you find her?!” And that’s how Kali ended up on the show.”

It’s a good thing, too. It’s hard to imagine True Detective: Night Country, the fourth installment of the popular HBO Original series (now streaming in full on Max), and the first helmed by López, without the gravity, potency, and sheer force of will Reis brings to the role of Navarro, who, along with Foster’s Liz Danvers, is investigating the horrific death of a band of male scientists, found naked and frozen on an Alaskan lake.

By association, they revisit the murder of a young Indigenous girl from six years before. The series’ supernatural elements recall everything from John Carpenter’s The Thing and the horror film The Grudge to True Detective‘s own first season, which had its own brush with things not necessarily of the tangible world.

Reis, a former world champion boxer, who logged 19 wins out of 27 professional fights — five of those by knockout — is an instinctive actor with a magnetic onscreen presence. The fact that she goes toe-to-toe with Foster — herself giving one of the most thrilling, intensely electrifying performances of an already-storied career — is proof enough that Reis will have an extraordinary future in acting.

The 37-year-old Rhode Island native is half Indigenous (she identifies as a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe) and is half Cape Verdean. “It’s like you don’t fit in a box,” Reis says during our interview. “You’re not just…Indigenous. You’re also Cape Verdean. But you’re not full Cape Verdean or you’re not Black. You’re not full. So it’s just, where do you fit?”

Reis also identifies as Two-Spirit, which to her means “I’m a hundred percent comfortable and walking in my masculine energy…and I’m also a hundred percent comfortable walking in my feminine energy.” And while she has been married to her former manager, Brian Cohen, for two years, she admits “I’m not attracted to one gender,” and was previously engaged to a woman, something she talks about openly, warmly, and without hesitation.

“A lot of actors have to work to build to an emotion,” says López of her newfound star. “Kali, because she’s had a life, she’s a really interesting character, she’s gone through some stuff and she has had many incarnations, she can conjure those emotions in a second because she knows them. And it’s a superpower to watch.

“On top of that, she is consistent in her work and her belief system. She’s an activist. She’s been an activist for a long time about missing and murdered Indigenous women. And she made her fighting career a chance to talk about that and bring attention to that. And her acting career is about it too. So there’s a total transparency in the moral mettle of who Kali Reis is. She is a warrior with heart.”

METRO WEEKLY: Let’s kick off with True Detective, which was truly extraordinary this season. What was it like when you found out you were going to be part of the franchise?

KALI REIS: I still sometimes struggle to find the exact words, but being a huge fan of the first season and the True Detective franchise, when I found out I was going to be a part of it and just to get this opportunity to tell this amazing story, I was just like, “Oh, wow, I’d better not mess this up.” I was just really excited and honored. And then to hear I’d be opposite Jodie Foster was both terrifying and exciting at the same time.

MW: What was it like playing opposite Jodie?

REIS: It was good. I am a huge fan of her work. After I found out it was her, I started going through my Rolodex of movies I admire, and I realized that she was in a lot of them. So knowing that she was a master of her craft, being in her selected craft since she was three years old, I was just like, “Oh, wow.”

She’s such a very, very highly intelligent human, very interested, very supportive, really generous with her time and her knowledge. She’s very, very sure of who she is and what she wants to convey in a character. She’s very collaborative, and she is hilarious.

MW: I rewatched the finale last night and it is one hell of a final episode. You and Jodie have some of your most incredible scenes together — so much comes out emotionally at various points. I can’t imagine what it’s like to play some of just the intensity of those scenes, especially the one where Danvers, brimming with rage and pain, lays into Navarro.

REIS: That’s one of my two top favorite scenes. And as we were shooting it, it was a very, very intense scene. But I just knew we were creating some magic there. I knew that personally, Jodie wasn’t yelling at Kali. You know what I mean? When the cameras are off, we’re cracking jokes and quoting different movies that we love. She’s picking my brain about fantasy football. She’s asking me about boxing….

I just watched her come from a core of pain in this character. It was definitely intense. Issa gave us a beautiful story to tell with these very complex characters. There wasn’t a dry eye for the crew watching us do those two scenes.

Issa had treated it like a closed set. There were the least amount of people possible because they were really important turning points for the characters. And it was amazing on my end to watch Jodie work. Navarro doesn’t say much, but at this point, Navarro is completely broken.

MW: I don’t want to spoil anything for people who haven’t watched the season yet, but can you talk a little bit about the evolution of the relationship between Navarro and Danvers?

REIS: You can tell at the very core that these two characters at some point or another were really close, and were real friends and had a real connection, which makes for a real, real ugly opposite outside of the spectrum. When you have that connection, and if people really know you, they know how to get under your skin. Those are the ones that you really, really connect to.

But also, they both respect one another. If you are in a mutual job, you have a mutual goal. You don’t have to like them, but you can respect somebody’s work ethic or their skills or their intelligence on how to get the job done, and that’s really what you have there.

At the end of the day, if one of them were in a foxhole, they wouldn’t hesitate to think to save the other one. They went through some things in their life together, but they can’t stand each other at this point. Their different perspectives were too much to continue to try to have that partnership, if you will. But it was actually fun to build on the love/hate relationship, especially the hate part, because Danvers loves to poke at Navarro. Navarro loves to poke at Danvers.

And I think Danvers respects Navarro for being able to give it right back to her. Everybody else shuts up, and is like, “Okay, let’s not piss Liz off.” But Navarro’s like, “Oh, no, I am going to piss you off, and I really don’t care, because I really know who you are.”

So it’s nice to see their arc, too, because, towards the end, you get to have a glimpse of their return back to a newfound connection where they don’t have to hate each other. You know what I mean? When the shit hits the fan, the ones who really got your back, got your back. There are no questions asked. And it’s really beautiful to see that they’re really there for one another.

Navarro individually has this craving for truth and justice, and Danvers knows that. She doesn’t completely understand where it comes from, because she’s just so logical. It comes from an otherworldly, spiritual, intuitive place for Navarro.

They’re mirrors of one another. If Navarro walks on the intuitive, reactive side a little bit, on the spiritual side a little bit too much, Danvers is there to ground and balance it out. Danvers is strictly logical, rational, tangible. She tries to ignore the intuitive part, but she sees the reality of it in Navarro. So I believe they mirror each other, and you get to see that throughout the whole series.

MW: This season deals with justice, but in such a way that the bearers of the law do not necessarily serve it out. Without giving away the ending, what did you think about that idea?

REIS: First of all, I didn’t see it coming. I’m like, “Well, slow clap and bravo to Issa for even constructing that.” Issa said something recently — “When you write, especially something in this genre, you have to know who did it first. And then you can fill in the blanks. If you don’t know who did it, you might go off way too far.” So when she said that, it clicked. She knew who did it from the beginning, she just had to fill in the blanks and fill out this. It’s like in life. You know your goal, but in between and how you get there is usually not any of your business. It’ll figure itself out. And that’s how I interpret it.

Coming from an Indigenous native point, and being a mixed Indigenous woman, knowing how matriarchal we are as a society, especially, our women are sacred. When it comes down to the injustices of our people — missing and murdered Indigenous women don’t get mainstream attention, and there’s such a lack of resources, lack of care to take these cases seriously. I have personally experienced the families of these victims and these missing people having to take justice into their own hands, actually having these grassroots organizations put boots on the ground to literally look for their loved ones, because the authorities won’t. So they have to take justice into their own hands.

The show gives you a suggestion of “Here’s a rational answer.” You have the whodunit. You have the “What happened?” But also, you really don’t have the full answer, because the suggestion of the rational is also intertwined with the spiritual and otherworldly. We really don’t really, really know what happened to those scientists.

But I was really happy to see that I believe that justice was served. Justice — the court system or the “book of the law” — is not necessarily just. So what justice looks like for the stewards of the land does not look like what justice looks like in a book that was written thousands of years after the people of the land were already working with the land and Mother Nature and the natural order of things.

I think that that suits the story, suits the people of the land. And I believe it satisfies the audience to be able to take a bite out of each. I was really happy to see that, especially selfishly.

MW: Speaking of the supernatural elements, I have to bring up Annie K.’s tongue. That was left unanswered. Do you know the answer to the tongue?

REIS: I do know the answer to the tongue, but I love it when people have to ponder. If I give everybody all the answers, it’ll be ruined. You know what I mean? It’s a beautiful painting. I don’t want to start putting a frame, and start making the corners and the edges all nice and perfect and pretty. So yes, I do know what happens to the tongue. And if you pay attention, you can figure it out. Or you can make up these theories. There are a couple of different theories and a couple of different “truths” that would make sense. You have to choose what you believe.

MW: So if we watch the series through again, there are clues pointing to the mystery of the tongue?

REIS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MW: Do you feel that the show’s supernatural elements have truth? Do the dead walk among us?

REIS: Coming from the background that I come from, and just the beliefs that I have, I’m very much “Team Navarro” as far as knowing that there’s something, and that the dead walk among us. I’ve had my own experiences while shooting in Iceland. Iceland is a very energetically charged place — in a very good, positive way.

So yeah, I know that we honor our ancestors there. The dead do walk among us. There is energy and unexplained energy. Energy has no prejudice. And there are things that are greater out there. Even if you are so strictly rational, I’m sure there’s one point in your life where you had to question rationality because there are just things that aren’t explained. So I’m a firm believer that the dead do walk among us. Absolutely.

MW: Was your shoot in Iceland as cold as it appeared?

REIS: Absolutely. I mean, because of the very fact that Alaska is so cold and the weather conditions are so intense, and the people of Alaska — they’re superheroes, because they are built differently, the way they survived and they’re so resilient is just…. It would have been impossible to shoot in Alaska. It gets 80 degrees below in those types of places. But in Iceland, it gets freezing, too. So if it looks cold, it’s cold.

The cold was a useful thing. It wasn’t like we were on a set for the entire shoot and we had to try to pretend what it would feel like. It was freezing cold. It was two in the morning, negative 15, negative 20. You get to feel what these people would. It was hard to breathe. Hard to say lines. I wore layers on top of layers.

MW: I would not be able to act in those circumstances. I would just say, “Put in my cold breath digitally, please.” I’ve got to ask: Were the ice caves a set, or did they find an authentic location for those scenes?

REIS: There are real ice caves where we were, but danger is a-lurking. So that was actually a really, really fun set that I was begging to play hide and seek in. It was constructed around real rocks and ice. But they had to construct that, because there was no way we could get a crew in the ice caves. They did such a great job. I felt like I was in a real ice cave.

MW: It was absolutely beautiful.

REIS: It’s so cool.

MW: What part of you personally did you bring to the character?

REIS: The physicality, number one. That was one of the obvious things. My profession as an athlete — a professional fighter. It’s a male-dominated profession I’ve been in for over 20 years, 15 years as a professional. Mostly, it’s getting better with time — women’s boxing is becoming more of an equal now, but that’s still a long way to go.

Navarro’s an ex-Marine, did three or four tours in Afghanistan, and all around the Middle East, and is now a law enforcement officer. There’s a type of physicality as a woman that you have to have in a male-dominated profession. And something as physical as law enforcement, you have to command attention, you command respect, and that has a lot to do with physicality. Somebody should respect you before you open your mouth, as far as I’m concerned, in that type of authoritative policing type of job. So that was something obviously that I had to bring there.

Number two, Navarro’s from both Iñupiaq and Dominican background. She’s not full-blood anything. She’s a lot of things. Me being Seaconke Wampanoag and Cape Verdean, coming from those two backgrounds, it’s like you don’t fit in a box. You’re not just Wampanoag or Native or Indigenous. You’re also Cape Verdean. But you’re not full Cape Verdean or you’re not Black. You’re not full. So it’s just, where do you fit?

Navarro grew up in the community and then left, and then had to come back, so she doesn’t feel part of the community. And then she chooses a profession that is already taboo or has a lot of mixed feelings in the Indigenous community, being in law enforcement. So it’s having to walk a fine line where you want to do your job, but you also want to make sure you take care of the community.

I made Navarro a Scorpio. I am a Scorpio rising, so I understand the necessity for death and destruction for things. As a Scorpio, you’re willing to go there. You’re very deep, very caring, very, very calculated. Me personally, I’m a Virgo, but I’m very calculated — I want to be ten steps ahead of the person. I want to actually really think.

The way we differ is that Navarro has zero hesitation. She makes a decision and does it. Me? I’m compartmentalizing. I’m still doing my Virgo thing. I’m thinking, but Navarro’s hair-trigger is way thinner than mine. She will just snap immediately. Snap, snap, snap, and she makes a decision. I don’t want to snap on people, but her non-hesitation is something I admire. She just makes a decision, goes, and then she’ll deal with it later.

The vulnerability part of Navarro is something that I found within myself. So my strength has become my vulnerability. I didn’t plan on being a “motivational speaker,” but people just wanted to hear my story and got motivated by it. But it was just me being very vulnerable and very open about who I am and what I’ve been through, and just finding healing and very cathartic process through that. And then that was my strength, and then I started finding a bigger purpose on why I fight. And it just snowballed from there — where you see Navarro’s strength is in her vulnerability. When she’s open, and she just settles in, that’s where her strength is. That’s where you see her really know who she is.

MW: When we put in for the interview, they mentioned you were Two-Spirit. For those people who don’t know, what exactly is Two-Spirit? Can you give us a quick primer on it?

REIS: Absolutely. And I’ll explain it to you what it means for me. Just like in the LGBTQ community, it means who you are. It may mean something different to me versus somebody else. I’m married [now] and I have a husband — but I’ve never labeled myself. It was everybody else labeling me. “Oh, you’re engaged to a woman, so that means you’re gay.” I’m like, “I’m just Kali. And my partner happens to be female.”

I never didn’t know the term Two-Spirit as a kid. I just knew that I was different, and things weren’t accepted. So the term Two-Spirit to me means that I’m a hundred percent comfortable and walking in my masculine energy. I can be all the way there, I have no problem with it. That’s who I am in that moment. And I’m also a hundred percent comfortable walking in my feminine energy. I’m just completely comfortable with it. I’m not attracted to one gender. “This is what I need, this is what I want.” I see people’s souls. I’m attracted to people’s souls. I like who the person is. If they happen to be a male, and they decided they want to change into female, “Okay, great. You’re still the person. I really don’t care.”

Was I more comfortable in the past being with females? Absolutely, because I felt like I could be more myself. Did I prefer to be with females? Absolutely. I wanted to be more myself. So that’s what Two-Spirit means to me.

I think in the community, from the outside looking in, people just associate everything with sex: “This is what you are. What you do in the bedroom reflects who you are as a person.” That’s not what I look at sexual identity as.

Now, if you talk to somebody else who’s Two-Spirit, it may just be that they are a man who is just strictly attracted to a man, and they happen to be Indigenous, so they identify as Two-Spirit. And they might go into more of the spiritual part of it. I don’t want to speak for anybody else, but that’s what it is — you dance on two sides.

And there are different tribes or clans or nations that recognize Two-Spirit people as being a special people. Not all, but there have been some Indigenous communities that really hold Two-Spirit people as special people — medicine people — because they’re just able to fluctuate and be the full spectrum. But it varies. That’s the one-dimensional depiction of what an Indigenous person, Native American person, or a Two-Spirit person is. It’s ever-flowing. It’s all the colors of the rainbow, no pun intended.

MW: My understanding is that it’s occupying both genders at the same time.

REIS: Yeah, you show up. I have the ability to show up however I need to show up. It’s not like I am just this one, and I am just walking in this one kind of energy. I can show up however I need to show up. I’m comfortable to bounce to either of them.

MW: You’re married to a man, but in the past you’ve had relationships with women.

REIS: Absolutely. My past relationships, I was engaged to my ex — I don’t know, five, six years, was a woman. I’ve been with women, with men as well. I don’t have a long list. [Laughs.] And I joked, I was like, “Does my LGBTQ card get taken away? Because everybody thinks I was gay, but I’m like, I’ve never said, ‘I am Kali Reis and I’m gay.'” I’m just, “Hey, I’m Kali. I’m Two-Spirit and I happen to be married to a man.”

MW: How long have you been married?

REIS: I’ve been married for two years, and honestly, I would say he is my best friend. He’s also my boxing manager. We were best friends and we had no agenda of getting together at all. And then I guess we got jumped by Cupid or something. It just happened. So I literally married my best friend, and happens to be a man. And I’ve never felt more fluid in my sexual identity, or just me being me as a Two-Spirit woman than being with him. He allows me to be me. I’m open to be whoever the hell I want to be, how I want to be, and show up. And he’s just like, “Okay, cool.”

MW: When you were in a relationship with a woman, was there any difficulty coming out to your family?

REIS: So my sisters and one of my brothers, everybody knew. It’s like everybody knew that Kali is different. “Kali? Oh, yeah. Kali likes girls. Okay, so what?” Nobody was frigging surprised whatsoever. They laughed and said, “Yes. Oh, we know.” And I didn’t say, “I’m gay.” I didn’t say, “I’m a lesbian.” I didn’t say, “I’m bisexual.” I just said, “I’m attracted to women, I don’t know what to tell you” kind of thing.

I was very, very scared to tell my mom, though, because she’s Christian and went to church. So when I came out to my mother, that was a little different story. I didn’t get into a heated argument or anything. But my then-partner, she went to my mom to ask for my hand in marriage to her, to have a blessing. And my mother told her, “Well, I can’t support that, because it’s an abomination.” And I felt so bad for my ex. She made her cry. But before that, I came out to my mom, and she basically told me that I was an abomination. I brought my mom to the movies. We went out to dinner. I was sitting in the car. I’m like, “So I have something to tell you.” And she just like, “Okay, well, you know what the Bible says…”

I was like, “What? I’m your kid. Really?” That was tough. That was tough to swallow. I think my brother was more mad at my mom about how she handled that than I was. But she loved me, handled it with love. And she got okay with it because she knew that I was just being me, my authentic self, that it wasn’t a phase. It wasn’t something that I was trying to do to piss her off. It was just like, “This is me. And if you don’t really accept me, that’s okay, because not a lot of people do.” So that was a little tough.

My [late] father, on the other hand — we had a weird relationship. When we were trying to reconcile, I called him after I went out to dinner with my mom. I’m like, “Can you believe?” He accepted everything. And he said exactly what I needed to hear from my mother. And when it was really flipping on its head, because he wasn’t there for a lot of stuff, but he was there for me in one of the most important parts of my life when I came out. And I was like, “Wow, this is really weird.” I would expect the opposite. So it was a wild ride.

MW: Are you religious?

REIS: No, I’m not religious, especially the way I grew up. I have a weird relationship with religion. I respect people’s religion. I’m more spiritual, especially with my Indigenous teachings.

MW: Finally, I want to briefly cover your fighting career. I don’t know a lot about boxing, I’ll be honest. But I looked up your stats, and on your very first professional fight, you won with a knockout. Are you still fighting, or is that part of your career over?

REIS: I didn’t officially retire yet. I’m not sparring or anything, but I’m always training. I’m also on the other side of things, where I do commentary on fights. My husband’s a manager. I help him out with that stuff. We coach fighters together. So I will always be involved in boxing, but I haven’t retired yet. I mean, in a perfect world, I’d love to see what I could do with fighting again this year. But we’re kind of just balancing things out. And I needed a break health-wise. So like I said, I haven’t officially retired yet, but if it makes sense, then yeah, I’ll be in there again. Why not?

MW: I want to see more of the acting career.

REIS: Oh, yeah. That’s not going anywhere.

MW: So my question to you about the fighting is this — and it’s going to sound weird, but I’ve been thinking about it. I will never know what it’s like to be in a boxing ring. I’m too much of a coward. Can you put into words what it feels like to be in the ring during a fight? What does it feel like to get hit? What does it feel like to hit someone?

REIS: I feel like stubbing your toe is way worse than getting punched in the face, trust me. But I look at boxing as an art. I’m in there to hit and not get hit. I’m in there to do the best I can. It is like a chess match, as cliche as it sounds. But it’s a strategy. Anything that you do in anger, you’re going to be very clouded. You’re not going to be levelheaded. You’re not going to be able to think clearly. You have to be so grounded in your choices, and be able to be so present to react off and to execute the plan at a millisecond. You have to relax. You have to have fun. You have to be able to outthink your opponent. Obviously, there’s the physical endurance part of it, but it’s exhilarating.

I mean, especially for the purpose that I fight for now. I mean, it is what I call my medicine. It’s what the energy that I put out and what I fight for, it doesn’t compare. So if you ask me on that aspect, will I fight again? Absolutely. I’ll always fight. But is it something I want to do every day, to get punched in the face? Absolutely not. But it’s rewarding. I mean, this is one of the hardest things. You use every fiber of your body. I mean, you’re thinking. Your hands are up. It is very, very mental. You have to take information from your coaches and apply it. And if they don’t see how I see things in the ring, I might think I’m keeping my right hand up, but I might need to be higher, because I’m getting hit with a shot. It’s just a lot to think about.

But I will say, when the bell rings, I’m in there to do a job. I’m in there to kill. But outside of the ring, most fighters are very peaceful and chill. I look at it as an art form. And to me, it’s a very ceremonial thing, where it’s a lot to bring in to physically fight and do what my ancestors have been doing for centuries and fight. Fight what’s in front of me.

MW: What do you fight for now? What’s your fight now?

REIS: I have a slogan, “I fight for all nations.” And that manifested in a conversation with one of my warrior sisters from the Shinnecock Nation, where we’re trying to come up with my brand. But just to be able to see people’s reactions of how motivated they are to see faces like theirs in sports, in film, especially with sports. Bringing my culture into the ring, physically, having dancers and drummers walk me out into the ring, walk me out into battle.

And it’s not like I pick a specific song. It’s wherever territory I’m in, I ask the people of that land, of that region to help me bring me into battle so I can basically, in a physical form, put all our energy and all our prayers up, and put it out to the universe, to the creator. It’s my medicine, honestly.

I fight for our people, for representation. I make sure I bring awareness to missing, murdered Indigenous women, residential school survivors, pipelines, et cetera. Because it’s on a platform and I have a voice to use, and I get to put it in front of an audience that normally wouldn’t even know about it. So that’s what I fight for. I fight for us. It’s not about me, it’s about we.

I don’t fight for the belts. It’s great to be a six-time World Champion, but that’s what it is. I get to have these younger kids see themselves in an area that they normally wouldn’t see themselves. So it is exciting to be a motivation for the younger generation.

True Detective: Night Country is streaming in full on Max. Visit www.max.com.

Follow Kali Reis on X at @KO_Reis86.