Everyone’s a critic. Despite the critical and commercial success of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, the anthology series’ creator, Nic Pizzolatto, has allegedly trashed the fourth installment on social media, calling at least one aspect of it “so stupid.” In an interview with Vulture, Night Country showrunner Issa López—who has directing and writing credits on the fourth season’s six episodes—responded to Pizzolatto’s disparaging remarks: “That’s his prerogative.”
“I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative,” López told Vulture. “I wrote this with profound love for the work he made and love for the people that loved it. And it is a reinvention, and it is different, and it’s done with the idea of sitting down around the fire, and [let’s] have some fun and have some feelings and have some thoughts. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”
Pizzolatto created and wrote the first season of True Detective, which aired in 2014. The original True Detective starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, two homicide detectives who join forces to investigate a murder and a series of disappearances. The series was a critical and commercial success for HBO, leading Pizzolatto to make two more seasons of True Detective—a California-set second season with Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, and Rachel McAdams in 2015, and an Ozarks-set third season starring Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff in 2019.
Unfortunately for Pizzolatto, the subsequent seasons weren’t as well received as the original iteration, receiving mixed to negative reviews and diminishing ratings. True Detective: Night Country debuted on HBO on January 14, nearly five years after the series last aired. The newest installment stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as detectives investigating multiple murders in Ennis, Alaska, and has multiple ties to the show’s first season. Though they had no direct involvement in Night Country, Pizzolatto, McConaughey, and Harrelson are all credited as executive producers on the season.
Three episodes into the six-episode season, López’s True Detective: Night Country has been heralded as a return to form. It currently holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, True Detective’s highest critical score since season one. Though it aired opposite stiff competition in the NFL’s NFC championship game, the third episode of Night Country hooked 2.7 million viewers on Sunday night, marking a 5% increase in viewership from the previous episode. Per Variety, Night Country’s ratings are outpacing those of the final season of Succession and season two of The White Lotus, both of which were considered huge hits for the network.
Yet Pizzolatto seems intent on distancing himself from this iteration of the series he created. Right around when Night Country premiered, Pizzolatto already seemed less than thrilled, at one point changing his Instagram bio to read “True Detective S1-3 (NOT Night Country).” (He has since changed his bio to read “True Detective S1-3.”) Screenshots from a Reddit thread about True Detective also seem to suggest that Pizzolatto is not a fan of Night Country. Pizzolatto can be seen disparaging Lopez’s installment via Instagram comments, calling one of the show’s callbacks to True Detective’s first season “so stupid” and claiming that McConaughey does not appear in season four, “nor would he.”
“I certainly did not have any input on this story or anything else,” he allegedly wrote in another comment. “Can’t blame me.”
Pizzolatto may be salty about Lopez’s iteration of True Detective because he believes his version of the series remains unfinished. On April 27, 2023, Pizzolatto posted a photo of himself, McConaughey, and Harrelson on Instagram. “That’s a wrap on the complete table read for True Detective – The Return,” wrote Pizzolatto in the caption. “Shame we’ll probably never get to film it… What a story. Ah, well… Always fun to see these two.”
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