Movies - TV
Nic Pizzolatto Didn't Know He Was Writing True Detective When He Started Season 3
By SANDY SCHAEFER
After Season 2 of “True Detective” went through the sophomore slump following a stellar first season, the crime anthology took a three-and-a-half-year break to regroup. During that time, show creator Nic Pizzolatto started what he thought would be a new TV show or movie, but it turned out to be the premise for Season 3.
Season 3 centers around Wayne Hays, a former police detective who is suffering from dementia and trying to figure out the truth about one of his old cases. In an interview, Pizzolatto revealed, “I was thinking about a couple people close to me who have been touched by this affliction [dementia] and I was wondering if it would be possible to tell a man's life story in the form of a detective story.”
In the story, Pizzolatto wanted to deal with the questions, “What if the detective's ultimate mystery is: ‘Who am I?’ And: ‘What did my life mean?’” He went on to say that he didn’t start writing with the intention that the idea would be for “True Detective,” but after about 40 pages, he realized, “‘Oh, this is a ‘True Detective.’”