Gonna check this out when it drops. I'm sure everyone recognizes Jodie Foster, but her co-star Kali Reis is why I'm watching.
Reis is a former world champion professional boxer in two different weight classes. As someone with mixed indigenous American/West African/European ancestry, she used her platform as an athlete to call attention to the ongoing problem of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls across the US and Canada. A film director saw her doing so, and he happened to be writing a movie about it at the time, so he called her up. She eventually joined the project as a co-writer and starred in it, despite having no previous acting experience or any time to prepare for the role. The movie ended up being Catch the Fair One, which received considerable critical acclaim, with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes after 67 reviews. After one further independent film role, she found herself starring alongside Foster in this new season of True Detective. She compared it to a novice boxer being given the chance to train with Mike Tyson in the mid 1980s.
Reis definitely brings more believability to the role from a physical standpoint if there's any fighting to be done. Foster is an acting powerhouse but she's also a nice 61 year old lady. But Reis, in addition to being a two weight world champion professional boxer, is only 37. She also studied criminology in college while boxing and working as a bouncer.
Anyway, it's just really cool to see Reis break into the mainstream so quickly because her life and boxing career were a long, tough road. Reis was a victim of racism, homophobia, physical and sexual abuse as a child. She spent most of her boxing career in the era
just prior to when women began getting decent paychecks. So while she was training to fight world class opponents she was also going to college and then trade school, bouncing at clubs, repairing motorcycles on the side, etc. Kali had to travel all over the world and rubber band up and down in weight divisions to get fights. She already had 5 losses and a draw to some of the best women fighters in history before she finally broke through and won her first world title; most boxers cherry pick and pad their way to a 20-0 record before they fight a credible opponent but Reis had to do it the hardest way possible.
So it's really gratifying to see a her name on billboards and bus ads, getting co-star billing alongside one of her idols in Jodie Foster. I began following her simply because I'm a huge boxing fan, but it's hard not to root for her the more you learn about her story.
