Zahn McClarnon Never Thought He’d Do Comedy. Then Television Changed
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The post Zahn McClarnon Never Thought He’d Do Comedy. Then Television Changed appeared first on Consequence.
Since the earliest days of silent film, on-screen representation for Native culture hasn’t been that nuanced. But Dark Winds star and executive producer Zahn McClarnon recently had a revelation about one famous example that might deserve some more credit.
“I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest last night for the hundredth time, and I realized there was certain parts of that movie where they did show Native humor,” he tells Consequence prior to the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike. “That character, Chief, played by the late great Will Sampson, was absolutely amazing. There are little moments where you see where this character pulls the wool over everybody’s eyes. You see little glimmers of that Native humor in there. So it has been touched on a little bit.”
In the 1975 Best Picture-winning film, Chief represents, in some ways, “the stereotypical stoic, stone-cold Native that most people think Natives are,” McClarnon says. “And I think with our contemporary shows now, we’ve taken that and we’ve opened it up. We’ve opened that door up more because we have these wonderful storytellers who are really showing what it’s like.”
McClarnon would know a lot about that, as a working Native actor for decades. His first screen appearance, according to IMDB, was the role of “Hispanic Kid” in the 1992 CBS cop-with-a-dog-partner series Tequila and Bonetti. In 2022, thirty years later, he finally got his first starring role, in the AMC+ drama Dark Winds.
Starring in Dark Winds, he says, “is a dream come true. As actors, we all dream about having our own TV show. And being an E.P. on it, makes me even more fortunate. I’m just so grateful for all the work that I’ve done in the past 30 years, even the co-star roles in the beginning. You learn from each experience. You try to take that experience and put it into the next experience and learn from it and get better and better and climb that ladder. And all those experiences I’ve had throughout my career are something I try to remember and I try to hold onto as much as possible.”
The iconic Native actor’s not kidding about having a lot of experience: In the 30 years between Tequila and Bonetti and Dark Winds, he’s appeared in dozens of projects, from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in the 1990s to The Shield in the 2000s to, in the 2010s, a whole new level of attention with high-profile roles in FX’s Fargo, HBO’s Westworld, and AMC dramas Longmire and The Son.
That momentum has continued into 2023, with McClarnon appearing in a wide range of different projects: Beyond Dark Winds, he’ll be featured in the upcoming MCU series Echo as the father of title character Echo Lopez (played by Alaqua Cox), a role he previously originated in Hawkeye. He’ll also return for the third and final season of FX’s critically beloved Reservation Dogs, and there’s also the SXSW film Americana, a brief appearance in the Jennifer Lawrence comedy No Hard Feelings as “Gabe Sawyer, Surfing Lawyer,” and the role he says really terrified him — playing a Union soldier named Mingoes in History of the World, Part II.
“It was an honor when I got asked to be a part of History of the World, Part II. But drama’s different than the comedy. It just scared the hell out of me,” he says. “I mean, we’re talking about top comedians within television and film on this show, and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do here? I’m not a comedic actor.’ I told them that. I said, ‘It scares the hell out of me. I don’t know exactly what you want me to do.’ And they said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Come on set and explore the character and have fun.’ And that’s what I did, I just went in there and I had fun. And I don’t regret any of it.”
Like so many of the actors who were involved with the Hulu sequel to Mel Brooks’ classic sketch film, it was Brooks that was the major draw for him. “Come on, I’m not going to say no to that. I mean, I grew up on Mel Brooks. Young Frankenstein was one of my all-time favorite movies when I was a kid. Those are the comedies I liked. The Gene Wilders and the Richard Pryors and the Mel Brooks films and that type of humor always made me laugh. So I jumped at the opportunity — I didn’t meet Mel [in person, but] I met him on Zoom, and it was just amazing to stare at him on Zoom.”
As he continues, “it was a scary thing for me to do. But I had a blast doing it. I really did. I had a lot of good people around me to guide me and hold my hand. They would tell me if I was screwing up. I told them to. ‘If I’m not being funny, you guys tell me.'”
At one point in the series, Mingos ends up performing his own stand-up to a crowd of unfriendly Confederate soldiers — which can be a terrifying experience for even the most experienced of stand-up comedians. “It was tough, but it’s television,” he says. “You get multiple takes. You get to try different ideas and you have the support of everybody around you and they all want you to succeed. They’re not sitting there judging you or anything like that. And also, after years of doing this, you get more confidence as you grow as an actor, and you feel like you belong there sometimes. Not all the time, but you feel like you should be there and that they hired you for a reason. So keeping that in mind is always important in those situations.”
It’s perhaps those years of experience which have helped McClarnon tackle comedy in recent years, even though he says more than once that “I just never thought I would be doing comedy.”
History of the World, Part II (Hulu)
And a factor in that was the issue of representation: Until recent years, there simply haven’t been a lot of opportunities for comedy projects starring Native actors. Now, however, shows like Reservation Dogs, Peacock’s sadly canceled Rutherford Falls, and even the newest season of Dark Winds are doing a lot more to highlight the fact that, as McClarnon says, “we have so much humor and levity within our cultures.”
Until recently, he adds, “most of the Native perspective has come from different cultures, from white people that have written about Natives — and they have seen Natives in a certain way and stereotyped us in a certain way.” Today, though, things have changed, because “with different representation, we’re finally being able to tell the story of how it really is within our communities. I think we’re just finally having our own pathway here to tell our own stories and people are seeing different parts of our cultures that they’ve never seen before. And I think people are wanting different content, and they’re getting that with Native stories.”
This applies to the new season of Dark Winds, which McClarnon says features more levity than the first. In the AMC+ drama, McClarnon plays Lt. Joe Leaphorn, who’s doing his best to solve crime and keep the peace in 1970s New Mexico: Based on the Leaphorn & Chee novels by Tony Hillerman and executive produced by Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin, it’s an engaging crime story with a unique vibe and strong characters, the vast majority of whom are Native. “We have Native producers, we have Native directors, we have Native writers. Half the crew is Native. We have multiple Native guest stars. I’d say the cast is around 90% Native,” McClarnon says.
McClarnon was offered the role of Leaphorn by executive producers Chris Eyre and Tina Elmo, who also asked him if he’d be an executive producer on the series as well. “I had never done really any E.P. work before, so it was a huge opportunity for me. I became involved in all the pre-production stuff, showing up a month before we start shooting to be a part of the production meetings. I learned quite a bit in the first season of how a television show works and how it’s put together and all the intricate details. It’s a lot of hard work, it’s a lot of decision making, and I found myself being more involved than I thought I would be, as far as decision making with casting and hiring certain crew members, et cetera. I really enjoyed it. It gets stressful like any job, but I’m very fortunate.”
Looking forward, McClarnon says that “I have done a lot of what I’ve always wanted to do, but I don’t know, it depends on what comes my way, what jobs I audition for or I’m asked to do or offered. I think I can be a little bit more choosy now than I could in the past. So I would like to explore more of the father-son/father-daughter kinds of relationships.”
That’s something he got to explore in Echo: “That was a lot of fun, working with a young actor and exploring those nuances of those relationships, because I don’t have any kids and I have nieces and nephews. I can live vicariously through these characters and I enjoy doing that. I really do.”
In the meantime, he’s embracing everything that comes with his hard-won success, “because I’ve always wanted this, and it’s here. So enjoy it as much as I can.”
Dark Winds Season 2 is streaming now on AMC+.
Zahn McClarnon Never Thought He’d Do Comedy. Then Television Changed
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