Two Big-Name Actresses Could Be the New Leads in the Next Season of 'True Detective'

Impact

The news: Hot on the heels of the Brad Pitt-True Detective casting rumor comes this gem:

Ellen Page and House of Cards star Kate Mara as the central sleuthing duo of season two. No one’s declared this in any official capacity – in fact, it’s purely based on the actresses’ hypothetical Twitter musings. But it’s fun to imagine.

Here’s what went down: When True Detective writer-creator Nic Pizzolatto responded to this tweet:

… with this:

“@friggenawesome One of the detriments of only having two POV characters, both men (a structural necessity). Next season…

- Nic Pizzolatto (@nicpizzolatto) February 23, 2014”

He set off a flurry of speculative musings around who the possible female cast members would be. Of course, it was a great opportunity to crack jokes and conjure bizarre pairings too:

Image Credit: Grantland

And it even accompanied the now ubiquitous #TrueDetectiveSeason2 hashtag:

It was in this context that the Ellen Page-Kate Mara rumor came to be. When Page posted this tweet showing love to Mara:

… Rooney’s big sister shot back with this:

When HBO favorited the tweet, shit got real. Mad real:

Page signed off with the logical conclusion that the two would see each other soon in rehearsals:

Tweets via Vanity Fair

We’ll see if it actually happens. Jokes aside, such casting wouldn’t be far off base considering the duo’s past roles. Page came to prominence playing a tough kid who takes on a would-be child predator in Hard Candy, while Mara is famous for her role as investigative reporter Zoe Barnes in House of Cards. You could do much worse when casting a pair of cops.

Additionally, as evidenced by season one’s casting, Pizzolatto likes to match actors with location: Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are both native Texans, and the show was set in neighboring Louisiana. It’s a bit of a stretch, but Mara and Page are peripherally native to the region surrounding the northeastern U.S. – Mara from suburban New York and Page from Nova Scotia. A season set in the woods of upstate New York or the cold isles of eastern Canada could provide intriguing atmosphere for a murder mystery. However, a U.S. location is more likely, as Pizzolatto told Hit Fix that season two would be about “hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system.”

It’s hard to know what to believe. The only thing certain about season two is that fans can barely contain their excitement. True Detective emerged early this year as a uniquely absorbing examination of the moral and philosophical implications surrounding a murder investigation. Set in Louisiana, it was rich with atmosphere and symbolism, leading to incredible depths of fan involvement in deconstructing the hidden clues and meanings behind the show.

Novelist Nic Pizzolatto created the series and wrote every episode. As for how season two will actually look, it’s still up in the air. When he clarified that a female detective might not actually get cast, he told BuzzFeed that he “didn’t want to be beholden to a promise and then change [his] mind.” He added: “I’m writing Season 2 right now, but I don’t want to divulge any potentialities, because so much could change. I just never want to create from a place of critical placation — that’s a dead zone.”

As far as a Kate Mara-Ellen Page pairing, fans will just have to wait and see.