The True Detective Season 2 casting rumor mill is quite possibly our nation’s most successful new industry. Just look at all that has transpired over the past three months. First Brad Pitt was said to be “close to signing a deal.” Then it was Jessica Chastain who was “offered a leading role.” Then the show was going to have two female leads. Now, supposedly, Colin Farrell and Taylor Kitsch are close to signing deals and Vince Vaughn and Elisabeth Moss are “circling” the project, whatever that means exactly. (I like to think of them literally flying above the lot like hawks, wearing fake beaks and homemade wing-like apparatuses that they’re flapping furiously, while people on the ground look up in the sky and say “Is … is that Vince Vaughn? Is he flying?”) And that’s in addition to all the other names that have been tossed around.
Now, could these latest rumors be true? Sure! At the very least they feel truer, if only because we’re closer to a start date and these conversations are presumably heating up. But they could also end up being false, too, or just suggestions HBO is floating to gauge public reaction. All we really know for sure is what creator Nic Pizzolatto said in an interview last month: that the season wil be set in California and will have “four central roles.”
This brings me to my point: Since no one really knows anything right now, and everyone seems happy to continue speculating wildly, let’s toss out a few blatantly fake rumors and see if we can get one or two of them to stick. Start dropping these around town this week. Or hell, concoct a few of your own. The key is to make them juuuuuuust believable enough that someone could buy it. Let’s have some fun.
– Burt Reynolds will play Rex Sacramento, the crooked former mayor of Malibu who continues to use his connections to wield power from an upscale retirement community.
– Aaron Paul is considering the role of Brent Roundbone, a cop from Alabama who is struggling to adjust to the slick, slimy nature of Tinseltown, and who has some interesting theories about a mysterious murder they’re investigating.
– Val Kilmer has been offered the role of Chief Sal Venison, the L.A. area’s top cop, who just rose to power after the previous chief was indicted on corruption charges.
– Amy Adams is confirmed as Darla Lazarus, a tough Los Angeles prosecutor whose brother was killed over 10 years ago, in a murder that was never solved and bears a striking resemblance to the case at the center of the season.
– Allison Tohlman turned down the role of Penelope “Penny” Honeycutt, a bartender at at a seedy L.A. bar called Knuckledragger’s that operates as the headquarters for a violent prison gang called “The Five-Sevens.”
– Jeremy Renner has been approached about playing Lucious Copenhagen, leader of The Five-Sevens, and a prime suspect in a number of grisly murders.
– Jared Leto is on-board as Zeke Maybelline, a veteran L.A. cop who investigates cases in a highly unorthodox manner, often using the town’s gypsy population as his source of intel.
– Ted Danson is tiptoeing around the role of California governor Jackson Nebraska, a smooth politician who is hiding a dangerous secret.
– Tilda Swinton is all but signed on as Evelyn Bismark, a cold, brutally effective narco cop who has a tangled romantic history with Governor Nebraska.
– Jon Hamm is officially in as Detective Nick Sawtooth, a troubled recovering alcoholic who comes from a long line of cops and will serve as the season’s protagonist.
That seems like a good start.
