Awards Daily talks to John Hawkes about his character Hank getting scammed on True Detective: Night Country and why you need to look closely at his final scene with Danvers and Pete.
In a show filled with sad characters, somehow John Hawkes’ Hank feels like the saddest of all on HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, especially when Alina, the woman he’s been courting online, fails to show up for the holidays.
“When I first read the script and was speaking to Issa Lopez [showrunner], we had a couple of meetings where I was trying to figure out if I was going to do it or not,” said Hawkes. “It’s a big commitment and a heavy dark character. Those are hard to play. I knew it would be isolating and lonely and I have enough of that in my life than to go to Iceland and make it worse [laughs]. I did say, I know an incredible Polish actress who could do the part [of Alina], and Issa said, ‘She doesn’t show up, John. . .’ I was like, oh, damn. Good for my character, sad for my friend.”
And that’s just one element of Hank’s loneliness, including a strained relationship with his son (Finn Bennett), butting heads with Danvers (Jodie Foster), and being promised a promotion he never receives after (yes) cutting out Anna K’s tongue to prove a point.
“He is sent by the owner of the mining company to prove a point and to send a message to the other protestors in the town that you don’t mess with the mine. Then the quid pro quo is that he’ll be made chief of police, and of course that didn’t happen. He’s the kind of person who would go the extra mile to make sure he was doing his job.”
I had a great conversation with Hawkes about how that final confrontation scene came to be, how he decompresses from playing dark characters, and whether we’ll see him in lighter fare any time soon. Watch the interview below!