Spoiler alert: This Story Contains Major Spiilers for “Dark Winds” Season 3, Episode 6, Titled “ábidoo’niidęę (What He Had Been Told)” Streaming Now on AMC.
Through Season 3 of “Dark Winds,” Joe Leaphorn (Zahn MCCLarnon) has been been sees Monsters, particularly Ye’iitsoh, The Navajo Creature Known as Big Giant. He’s Haunted by Killing Wealthy Villain BJ Vines (John Diehl) in Season 2, and the Ye’iitsoh Has Been Plaguing Him.
At the End of Last Week’s Episode, He Had Another Encounter with the Ye’iitsoh – but was He Hallucinating or was it real? Episode 6 delifes into’s past and explains it shaped his Character.
Director Erica Tremblay Work with Younger Self. It also addresses Tremblay and the Writing Team Undrestood the Weight of Responsibility in Deieting This Particular Kind of Historical Trauma. They Started to Look at it Through
Navajo Writer and Director Billy Lustir Gre up Hearing Diné Folklore and History That Help Carve the Monster Slayer Story. Their Idea Was that the Episode Welf Open With Navajo Story of the Hero Twins Facing the Ye’iitsoh; Joe’s Presting-Day Conformation with a Monster that’s Been Haunting Him Thrug, Season 3; And the review of a Deeply Personal Childhood Trauma.
Tremblay Discussed the Writer’s Room Process of Addressing Native Historical Trauma, Working with McClarnon and You She Held Hand During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During During David Lynch’s Visuals Help Her With Transitioning Between The Worlds.
Take Me Into The Writer’s Room. What was Discussed about How You Welf Approach This Episode?
This was An Episode that Took a Real Long Time to Find. At first, this was a boarding school episode, and for a lot of different reasons, I think the Native Writers in the room, we was all like, “if we do a boarding school, there’s a light that you have To unpack in terries of Going back in time. ” We had everyone in the room Watch “Sugarcane,” and we haad a lot of conversations and decidd it Made Sense to Tackle this by Way of a Church in the Community, Versus Being Inside the Boarding School.
That broke Open a Lot of Ideas about how we could talk about leakorn’s past, and how though this Season The Monster is chassing him. But that’s An ALGory for his Trauma, PTSD, guilt and shame.
It was max hurwitz (Writer and Executive Producer) who said what if we tell it thrive a children’s story. Billy Luther is a Writer on this Episode and Is Navajo, and He Gre up uphering Leaphorn is Going Through His Subconscount As His SubConscount, He’s Pulling out all of the difference remains. To be a Cop, but only all of the reasons Why Sees The Corruption Inside of the Justice System and Ended up taking just inten his Own Hands.
The Episode OpenS with How did the ida come to make up?
It was a great way to set the Story Inside Diné Mythology. This was Going to Be Director “Dark Winds” Episodes, and We’re Going to Take You on a Dream-Like Journey. WE Searched High and Low to find the Space to Have this Place, and it’s a Shriners Building, and they have this status with hand-painted backrops from the 1920s, and it just gronded the Episode in the Mythology that is Fueling Leaphorn’s Fever Dream.
You’re Dealing with Leaphorn’s Monster and His Trauma. What Discussions Did You Have with your Collaborators, Production Designer, Composer and CinematogramPher About How This Fever Dream Needed to Look and Sound?
It was a real challenge. This Episode Does A Lot, But it Needs to Do I Remember Being in the Prep Meetings, and everyBody Had Ideas. The Dreamscape and Endless Desert in Joe’s Mind Are Diffrent Colors from the Tempeature When He’s With George, Running Around in the Real World at Night. Those Were All Purposeful Decisions.
I watched a lot of Anime, such as “perfect blue.” David Lynch was a HUGE Insation in this Episode, and Thinking of How to Have Creative Transitions from One Scene to the Next. I watched “eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “everything everywhere all at one” on Repaat as we we passing this to make up Magic INTO This Episode.
The Dinner Scene Was A Great Metaphor with the Broken Plate and Being in his “Childhood” home. What did that Mean to Represent?
That was one of my favorite transitions in the While Episode. He’s in the Desert, and He Walks with the Basketball Throw The Door. He Recognizes it as his childhood home, but it’s also his home now. And that’s what dreams are like – mixing Things that Exist in your Life with memories from the past, and they meeld to make up.
He sits download next to whom he Knows as george, but as he’s Looking at Him, He Realizes, “No, that’s me.” He’s Starting to Piece It to make up, that he’s in the past. What’s interesting is that everyone at that table is Joe leaphorn. Even when he’s bringing that conversation with the priest, that’s his interpretation of the priest, and in some Ways, as the Priest is asking for formiveness, he is asking for forgiveness. That was one of the first facts that we filmed, becuse we get to exrocise all of these different versions of his subconscious.
We get to see Joe Leaphorn Witnessing Will and the Abuse by the Priest. How Did You Want to Approach Telling This Part of the Historical Trauma?
Vry early on in the Writer’s room, we we talking about these Topics and themes, we knew we worked to go there, and we know that we needed to fighting out a watch to do it that was account to Leaphorn’s Story, But that also fet like it wasn’t mining Trauma of native America.
IT Time and Care to Excavate What that was Going to Look Look. Where was the Writing the show, everyone needed to feel good about it. We trusted our instincts and the non-native wresters. We wasDed to take the fear we were feeling and challenge ourselves to find Ways to Express This Dark History in a Way that Feels Authentic, but also is going to re-tigger and Re-TRAUMATIIII NOUR VIEWERS and The Nature Folks Working on The Show.
Zahn and i had conversations about how we went to do this in a Way that was going to live the least amount of marks on us asnce people. We Discussed Our Experience-We Have Parents, Grandparents and Great-Grandparents that Have Been in Boarding Schools or that Have Been in situations where they’ve been abous by the The Church. We We Ur Experiences in Life, Where Our Way of Life is Challenge by Western Systems that Have Been Hurld Upon Us, and the Violence that Exisms in the Wake of that is very real, and It’s still ongoing, and it’s still like sketing that we Experience and Deal with as Native People. At One Point, Zahn and I Turned to One Another, and I Was Like, ‘It’s A Scary Place to Go, But’re The Right People to Beings This. If we’re going to this, it’s Going to be you and me. ‘
What about Shooting this Sequney?
One of the First Decisions I Made Coming INTO The Episode Was that the Day We Shoot this Scene, it would be a Closed set. We’re Going to Bring in An Intime Cooorator to Make Sure that Enzo Okuma Linton, Who Played Will, Feels Good, and that His Parents Feel Good Because Enzo is a young NATIVE BOY in the Scene. We also worked to produce our Energies so that we could visit about the best version of that Scene.
One of the Most Beautiful Moments that I’ve Experienceed as a Director Happy HAPPULED. We shot everything with will and the priest first – and that was zahn’s choice – and he was known to then have all of his cogenge com at the end of the scene. He has to break open It’s that feeling of not beINING ALING to Do Do Onshing About it Beccause You’re a Child, and in this instance, you’re a native child, Witnessing Something Happyring by This Priest that Holds A Power in the system that they’re facing with.
We Did Several Takes, and He was Really Angry, Who is a really undersandable Expression of Witnessing This Thing. I Went up to him and said, “I think you have sorthing more than just anger to get to this, but I don’t what to go you a a Vry Complicated Thing to React to. ”
So see this tragic Sorrow and the emotion completing from him, it’s anger mixed with shame and Sadness. He gets One Line in and Says, “Erica, I Can’t do this by MySelf. You have to come on over here.”
I Cry Thinking About it. So I Walk to the Side of the Jail Cell, and He’s on the Other Side, and i’m an Inch Out of the Shot, and Underneath, His Hand is Holding My Arm Through The Bars, and He Gives This STUNING Performance. It was this memory where, as a director, you feel Trusted, and as a native person, you feel Trusted. In that Moment, Both Zahn and I Needed to Let Go and Trust One Another and Know that we’d be there for one. We’re Expressing Something that’s Deeply Triggering and Hard for Native America to Talk About and Discusss. Where we yelled cut, we knew we had it. Zahn’s Performance Is Noteing Short of Brilliant. HAD We Not Had Vulnerable, we countn’t have gotten there.
As Two Native People Tying to Say Something RealY HENEST and True. It’s a tv show and entertainment, it’s all these things, but at the end of the day, what we’re doing feels profound beccause we haven it. Things in our owakes, in our way, with our artistic license.
This Episode is About Monsters that we have to face in the literal and metaphorical sense, but also Deals with What We Learn from Facing that Trauma. You’ve said that you’ve been Giveen your Artistic License to Tell this Story, What does it mean to have it out there?
. Where is it is talking with his fatuer on the studp, and his dad is sitting, “I did the same thing,” He had to go in thre and Break Open that Trauma to Forgive Hiself For HIS Involutionment with BJ’s Death. We’re Flashing Back Between the Monster Slayer and the Hero Twins, Conquering The Monster. Where he Sees That to me is the lesson of the episode, is that the things that havled to native America and its Are Lack of Justice, The Monsters are Individuals, Human Beings Who Are Exacting This Thing Upon Other Human Beings. I think that Hopefully A Lesson that Non-Native Folks Can Take Away from this Episode.
This Interview Has Been Edited and Condensed for Clarity.
