Chris Pine and Patty Jenkins are going noir this weekend.
I Am the Night premieres on TNT in a sneak peek just after the SAG Awards, and it finds the pair who first worked together on Wonder Woman reteaming for a very different story about an equally compelling and even more mysterious and determined woman.
The show is based on the true story of Fauna Hodel (played by India Eisley), an adopted woman whose search for her real identity ended up being connected to the infamous and unsolved Black Dahlia murder. Pine’s character, reporter Jay Singletary, is a fictional guy, but the story he’s investigating is pretty real. Hodel herself wrote the book the show is based on, an autobiography called One Day She’ll Darken.
“I think the most fascinating thing ab out it was how many new layers unfolded at every step,” Patty Jenkins, who directed and executive produced the six part series, told E! News’ Zuri Hall at the show’s premiere. “You think you’re going to hear the story of one person’s identity, but the truth is every new layer she unfolded walked her right into some new incredibly guarded secret of Hollywood history.”
“There’s a line in the pilot which I love where she says, it doesn’t matter who I am,” Jenkins continued. “It turns out it hugely matters who she is, and who she is is terrible in a lot of ways, and yet her strength and fortitude defied all descriptives about how any of us will be ruled by what identity we’re told we are.”
If that doesn’t already sound like a reason to watch this show, don’t forget you’ve got Pine there, smoldering away as a reporter investigating this strange tale. Jay comes into the story with his own dark past, and Pine was fascinated by the fact that his character’s a veteran.
“He had killed people, and was haunted by that and that really got me thinking about the guys that we have coming back home now, and my character says something later on in the series, he says ‘they teach you to go to war, but they never teach you how to come back,’ and I think that’s something we should all be thinking about, and certainly something that every administration should be thinking about before they send young men and women off to kill for their country,” Pine says. “You can see the damage that its wrought in this man who’s pretty much thrown his life away.”
Luckily, through all the darkness involved in this tale, Jenkins and Pine had each other. Press play on the video above to hear just how much they love working together.
I Am the Night debuts after the SAG Awards, Sunday on TNT. The official premiere is Monday, January 28 at 9 p.m.