Wait, 'True Detective: Night Country' Wasn't Actually Filmed in Alaska?
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After True Detective’s third season hit the small screen five years ago, the crime anthology series is back for a fourth installment. The six-episode season—starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis—is set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska. The chilling destination is a stark contrast to previous seasons, which were filmed in Louisiana, California, and Arkansas. Unlike its predecessors, the latest season—aptly named True Detective: Night Country—wasn't filmed where it's set. In reality, the Alaskan town is portrayed by various locations in Iceland. If you’re eager to know more about the icy atmosphere, dig into everything we know below—from why filming took place in Iceland instead of Alaska to the frigid Nordic nation areas that provided backdrops.
Where Was True Detective: Night Country Filmed?
The fourth season follows detectives Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) as they investigate the disappearance of eight men who operate a research station in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska. Showrunner Issa López landed on Alaska as the setting after pondering how to recapture the success of the award-winning first season, which starred Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as Louisiana detectives and was led by the original True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto. (The second and third seasons were less critically admired.) López told Total Film that a big part of what made the first season a hit was its sweltering, southern setting. So, the filmmaker went in the complete opposite direction. “Where True Detective is male and it’s sweaty, Night Country is cold and it’s dark and it’s female,” López revealed at an HBO event per Vanity Fair.
Filming in Alaska wasn’t practical thanks to the area’s rough conditions. "As much as we would have liked to be true to the elements of the story, the part of Alaska where we needed to shoot this—which is above the Arctic Circle where the night expands into months—doesn’t have the infrastructure," López told Total Film.
The filmmaker added that the temperatures would’ve been so low in the months they planned to shoot that the cameras wouldn’t even work. Instead, they took the grueling 120-day shoot to Iceland. The country makes an excellent Alaska stand-in and has been tapped for many productions, including the newly released A Murder at the End of the World. Filming took place in and around Reykjavík as well as in the towns of Akureyri and Dalvík, where the production team built the whole fictional village of Ennis, according to Icelandair. Store facades, including a liquor store and gas station, along with traffic signs and specifically styled holiday decor give the Icelandic environments an American feel.
But the fictional Ennis wasn't completely dreamt up out of thin air. The sparsely populated place was inspired by the real area of North Slope Borough, Alaska, Today reports. While larger than the state of Utah, the region is estimated to have just over 11,000 residents. It boasts spectacular landscapes across nearly 95,000 square miles of northern Alaska.
Whether you tune in for the mystery or setting, Night Country already seems to be fostering a True Detective renaissance. Bundle up and tune in as episodes continue to air on Sunday nights on HBO and simultaneously drop on Max.
You love filming locations. So do we. Let’s obsess over them together.
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