For thirty years on the screen, Zahn McClarnon — a stone-faced, soft tone, simmered in quiet intensity — made his own name primarily by playing a fairly tough character.
“Ringer” had an owner of a murder strip club. HBO’s “Westworld” ghost nation leader, the tortured android Akecheta. And the menacing Hanzi Dent who is a ruthless hitman of the FX series “Fargo”. The list continues.
So I couldn’t blame the young actor for being a little scared, as Kiowa Gordon (32) did before starring with McLanon in the new six-part AMC mystery “Dark Winds,” which debuts on Sunday. They previously worked together in the Sundance series “Red Road”, but McLanon’s decades of experience and a thousand yards of staring haven’t lost their potency at all.
“Is this guy going to kill me?” Gordon laughed and remembered the possibility of working with McLarnon again. “Is he a robot?”
It’s not that killer robots can’t be attractive. “Just he appear Their “Dark Winds” co-star Jessica Matten later said with a laugh. “But he’s the sweetest guy on the planet,” she added.
For both indigenous Gordon and Matten, “Dark Winds” was an opportunity to work closely with the giants among the indigenous screen actors. For 55-year-old McLarnon, who helped paving the way for a new generation of native actors after decades of hustle and bustle, the show was his first protagonist and executive producer in a regular television series. Is his first series of. With experience of all levels.
The show is also special for Lakota and McLanon, a descendant of Ireland, thanks to the cast and crew. Almost the entire cast is native, as is Graham Roland (“Tom Clancy’s Jack”), to say the least. Ryan “); The entire room of the writer. Many other crew members, from assistants to props departments.
Perhaps, of course, this role seems to be his favorite so far. “That is, if I was placed there,” McLanon said.
“You are looking at the show from the perspective of people who grew up around their culture and understand what it’s like to live on a reservation,” added McLanon, who grew up on a reservation. “They understand nuances, relationships and humor.”
McLanon plays Joe Leaphorn, a veteran officer of the Navajo Tribal Police and half of Leaphorn & Chi, an indigenous crime-solving duo who is the protagonist of a long series of mystery novels by Tony Hillerman. Gordon plays the other half, Jim Qi, the newly arrived vice of Leaphorn. The story continues with them and Bernadette Manuelito (Matten), a Navajo police sergeant investigating a horrific double murder complicated by an armored car robbery that may have involved armed native groups.
This is the first time McLarnon has starred in the adaptation of Leaphorn & Chee. Others consist of four feature films (“The Dark Wind,” “Skinwalkers,” “Coyote Waits,” and “A Thief of Time”), Adam Beach, Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene, and Wes Studi.
In a video interview from his home in Los Angeles last month, McLanon was entertaining and unobtrusive. Asked about his luck, he admitted much to the help of others and his punctuality (not a joke).
When talking about nomadic childhood (my father worked for the National Park Service), his early days in Los Angeles, and his long way to the “Dark Winds,” he felt that his success was more than that. I did.
Born in Denver, McLarnon stopped at Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and spent much of his early life in Hopscotch throughout the Midwest. “I basically grew up in park service,” he said.
Self-proclaimed “fickle child” — “I didn’t like school very much,” he admitted — he acted in Iowa after playing a small role as an apostle in the local production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I fell in love with it.
“They wanted people with long hair, and they obviously wanted to include people in color,” he said. “That’s why I got the job.”
McLanon was crazy about his comrades and the big cheers. After appearing in several local commercials (one shot a hoop and another played a construction worker), he moved to Los Angeles in 1991 to pursue his career career. .. It was a time of great expectation for indigenous actors.
“There was a piece that came out with’Dances with Wolves’ and was looking for a Native American actor,” he said. He found a group called First Americans in the Arts in Los Angeles. This is a group of actors united by a national casting registry, including Julius Drum (“Thunderheart”). Steve Reevis (“Dances with Wolves”, Coen brothers “Fargo”); and Study (“The Last of the Mohican”).
Some of them shared a Hollywood apartment and often tried the same role. “We auditioned for each other. We hung out in Pow Wow,” he said. “There was obviously competition, but I’m glad everyone was working.”
Still, it was difficult to avoid the role that affects stereotypes. “Because I have a particular perspective, I played both a Latin gangbanger role and a native role,” McLanon said. No matter what it is, no matter how small it is. Indeed, his sharp cheekbones and ghostly eyes conveyed an unforgettable subtle ferocity. (The New York Times critic Mike Hale recently described him as “the man you remember, even though his name was well below the cast list.”)
“Zahn has a very expressive face and has a beautiful way to communicate a lot without saying anything,” said Roland, creator of “Dark Winds.” “He has tremendous melancholy.”
By the time McLarnon landed in “Dark Winds,” he had appeared in more than 80 movies and television shows. Recently, it includes FX that has been acclaimed in the full drama “Reservation Dogs”, where McLarnon plays a hard-nose yet gentle officer. big. There is that quiet strength again.
“Man, there’s gravity,” said Chris Air, who directed the four episodes of “Dark Winds.” (His achievements include the director of “Smoke Signals” since 1998, the first feature film written, directed and screened by Native Americans, and widely distributed in theaters.) And his decades of film and television work. “
The show’s list of executive producers includes Santa Fe residents Air, Robert Redford, and George RR Martin. Eyre met Redford, a former executive producer of Leaphorn & Chee’s adaptation, through the Sundance Institute Directors Lab in 1995, and the two remained friends. Martin met writer Hillerman through the New Mexico Writer’s Club in the 1980s and was a big fan of his work.
“The light bulb went out,” Air said. “It was around 2015 and 2016, and we all sat down and started kicking this idea of reviving Hillerman.”
McLanon secured the role of Leaphorn before the show turned green. “Frankly, I don’t know if I sold the project to AMC if Zahn wasn’t affiliated,” Roland said. “He was a big part of our marketing.”
The series was finally picked up in July 2021 and production began the following month. McLanon has set out to reassure people.
“On the first day of’Dark Winds’, he goes to the crew.’I just want to raise my head to everyone. It looks grumpy, but it’s not,'” Matten said with a laugh. It’s just a process. ”And that’s very true. The man’s body has no mean bones.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve heard that many leads don’t really welcome the co-stars’ opinions,” she continued. “But he’s smart and understands what this brings to the indigenous peoples and how this will affect us all in the long run.”
Gordon had a similar experience on the set. He said three leads were tied in three months of production and he’s been in touch since then. “Well, when he’s at home,” Gordon said. “Sometimes he just rests for a few weeks and rides a bike all over the country.”
McLanon is currently working on several projects, including the Disney + Marvel series “Echo” scheduled for next year, replaying the role of the famous superhero father in the series “Hawkeye”. It’s like the role he wants to play more.
“Finally, I’m old enough to look like my father,” he said. “Well, the nuances of my father’s, relationships, and intimacy-I think it’s love, whether it’s love or love for another person. Exploring such things takes me out of bed. It’s something to put out. “