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With the strikes, I didn’t have the chance to express my feelings around Reservation Dogs’ ending. What’s that expression, if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it even make a noise? How do you reckon with the show that’s really changed all our lives coming to a close? I think I’m inching closer toward processing it.
Nobody really knew that it was going to be the end until halfway through the [third season]. That’s when we started hearing whispers. But Sterlin [Harjo] has been our leader. If he felt like this is where we close the story, then we have to respect him. For me, I knew that my character Elora Danan’s journey had to come to an end either way. If the show had continued, we wouldn’t have been following her as closely. Even if the character is fictitious, she’s so real to me and to so many people. I wrote an extensive passage to myself in my Notes app the day after we wrapped. I felt like I was untethering her from my skin.
We’ve all felt the impact of this show. Doors are now open — and not only for us who have directly worked on Reservation Dogs but for people who are from Indigenous communities. The appetite for Indigenous stories is growing and expanding, and we’re seeing more Indigenous storytellers able to break through. I know that Indian country wants more [Reservation Dogs]. I hope those things happen, but I don’t just want there to be one Indigenous show. I want it to spawn many different projects across many different genres.
We were one of the first projects back in the midst of the pandemic, and I remember all of us saying, “I can’t believe they’re letting us tell this story in the way that we want to tell it.” When we got the green light, we all made sure that we never took any minute of airtime for granted. Until the very end, every step of the process, it was, “We can’t believe they’re letting us do this.”
This story first appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.