He may have started the third season of “Dark winds” By crawling through the desert in the dead of the night with an injured leg and a dart stuck in his neck, but for Joe Leaphorn by Zahn McClarnon, things can always get worse. “There is a lot at stake for Joe,” said McClarnon, whose lieutenant of the Navajo police supports marital discord, infantile trauma and an annoying FBI investigation. “He made mistakes and people around him suffer because of this. Not only can he lose his wife, played by the wonderful Deanna Allison, but he can also lose his freedom.”
The AMC series, based on Tony Hillerman Leaphorn & Chee's novels, follows Navajo Nation Tribal Cops Leaphorn, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) in the early 1970s while resolving crimes in a white power structure that regularly descends the life of the Amerindians.
McClarnon, speaking of Camel Rock Studios in Santa Fe, NM, took a break in the shooting of the fourth season of “Dark Winds” to talk about travel in mind, authenticity and the power of euphemism.
In the Surrealist episode “ábidoo'niidęę (what he had been told)” Joe is injected with a tart at point of ketamine which makes him revisit a trauma of the sexual abuse of his past. Have these sequences been filmed on a closed set?
The director, Erica Tremblayclosed the tray for a scene specifically, when I face the priest and my young cousin. It was great to be with collaborators who made me feel safe in these vulnerable moments. I could understand because I had events in my past very similar to what Joe crosses.
Sorry to hear that.
No, that's fine. It certainly does not define me. But it is the first time in my career where I entered the office of my producer at some point and which was broke a little because I had trouble with these blurred lines between reality and pretending.
Joe is also trying to resolve the murder of a Navajo boy while Jenna Elfman's FBI agent examines the mysterious death of season 2 of Mogul BJ Vines.
When Joe left BJ Vines in the desert to die, he sort of (for him) what happened to the Navajo people in the 1800s when the government put them on “The Long Walk”. Many of them hurt to death, having to walk hundreds of kilometers on foot in the middle of winter. It was Joe's justification: “OK, you can return to civilization by yourself.” As a man Navajo, as a man in principle, Joe finds himself in turmoil on this decision.
You are N ° 1 On the call sheet and most of your scenes are quite intense. How do you decompress?
Usually, after a season, I go up to my mother in Nebraska and I spend time with her. I am 58 years old and much healthier now than I was in my previous life, when I had trouble with dependence. I finally became clean and sober 25 years ago, with the help of many people, when I had my great moment of clarity – that I deserved more than I was doing. I use these experiences in my game today.
The actor of “Dark Winds” Zahn McClarnon.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Your mom, who is Lakota and your father, who is white, raised you and your twin brother in Montana near the Glacier National Park. How did you find your way to act?
My father would take us every Friday in films at Drive-In. Seeing “Three Days of the Condor”, “Little Fauss and Big Halsy”, “Dog Day afternoon” – which sparked something in me, even if I did not realize it later, it was this desire to express myself. Acting gave me a goal.
In 2015, you made a big impression in “Fargo” as a gentle Hanzee tooth killer. Like most of your characters, it gives off force thanks to restraint. This approach works clearly for you.
The Al Pacino that I saw in “The Godfather” was so discreet that he did not have to do much. (I admire) this kind of action. For me, many of these things are internal and I suppose it comes out in your eyes. I know that when I am honest and when I am not honest, and generally, when I am “big”, it is not honest.
You recently appeared in “Dogs reservation”, co-created by a citizen of Seminole Nation, Sterlin Harjo, and you serve as an executive producer of “Dark Winds”. It must be comforting to make shows that put the Amerindian experience in front and center.
It is essential that native children are finally seen on films and television in an authentic and positive way. With “Dark Winds”, even if Tony Hillerman was a white guy, we recontextualized his books with a room of native writers, native consultants, native actors, native directors. “Dark Winds” opens doors so that people see us in a different way that they have never seen us before.
