‘True Detective’ season 2: Creator on avoiding criticism, telling story vs. expectations

Is Nic Pizzolatto one of the most interesting showrunners working on TV right now? It’s hard to imagine anyone with a more interesting story. He came to HBO with “True Detective” without much experience with TV, and somehow managed to land two major stars in Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, while also making the show into one of the buzziest shows of 2014 so far.

Now, he is staring in the mirror of another enormous challenge: How to meet whatever sort of expectations are out there to do this craziness all over again. That is no easy task, but it doesn’t sound like he is that worried about it. He doesn’t feel the need to fire back at many of the first season’s staunchest critics, including those who suggested that his female characters in season 1 were often underdeveloped.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Pizzolatto tried to sum up his feelings on appeasing the critics with his new season with the following:

“I don’t think you can create effectively toward expectation … I’m not in the service business.”

We can understand why Nic would feel this way, though we’d argue he is in the “pleasing people business” (which isn’t that far from the service business). He needs viewers to keep his show on the air; however, there’s a difference between pleasing an audience and trying to make every critic happy. He’s done the former, and we’re pretty sure that the latter is impossible based on what we know about critics.

Pizzolatto declined to talk much about the rumors that are circulating out there about his show in this interview, including the potential candidates for roles like Vince Vaughn and Elisabeth Moss. Ultimately, we’ll just have to wait and see on that.

Photo: HBO