‘Reservation Dogs’ Creator On First Comedy Nominations: “We Were An Integral Part Of Change And First Change Is Not Easy”
FX’s breakthrough — and thoroughly unique — comedy Reservation Dogs struggled for three seasons to find an audience before creators Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi decided to end the series in 2023.
Fortunately, the series got its due Wednesday; the single-camera comedy that follows the exploits of Elora Danan (Devery Jacobs), Bear Smallhill (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor) in rural Oklahoma earned its first-ever nomination in the best comedy category while star Woon-A-Tai nabbed one for best actor in a comedy.
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“I swear I didn’t watch [the nominations],” Harjo told Deadline. “I was cleaning my house and I was talking to my brother. All of a sudden I got like 50 texts in a row and I was like, something happened and I remembered that it was the announcement morning. It’s been crazy.”
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The show from FX Productions was a breakout because of its accurate and knee-slapping depiction of Native people. FX didn’t want to say goodbye but the creators felt it was time.
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“I wanted to make some other things,” explains Harjo. “Within my culture it was such a big thing. It just changed lives and people talk to you about it every day and I can never imagine letting it go for too long. And for me it needed to end on a really strong note and go out so it’s always in people’s memory and it’s always this perfect thing to them. I would’ve died if I would’ve done another season and people would’ve been like, ‘it’s not as good.’ I needed this to be perfect because it was so culturally important to Native people.”
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When asked about the lack of Emmy love during the first two seasons, Harjo says he can’t help to suspect that racism may have been at play.
“Look, I think racism isn’t violent always,” he said. “It can also be that you don’t want to hear other people’s voices and I think that it was harder to reach some people. I think they have a lot of preconceived notions about what a Native show would be and that is fed by many, many, many decades of really bad representation representing us, not from our voice but from the outside. So I don’t blame people because Hollywood did a good job of really mucking up Native culture and I don’t blame people for not right out of the gate being drawn to watching the Native show. I think that we were an integral part of the change and the first change is not always easy. It’s like they booed Bob Dylan when he went electric. When we look back at that now, we go, ‘wow, that was dumb.'”
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So does he regret ending the show now?
“I had say legends never die. Reservation Dogs will never die. It’s pretty legendary. I think we came in, we said what we wanted to say and we got out before someone else told us we should. And I think that that should be held in higher regard these days. People kind of drag things out for the sake of money or whatever. And I think that we held true to storytelling and the story that we wanted to tell. At a certain point, the genuine nature of Reservation Dogs would’ve changed and it wouldn’t have felt genuine anymore because we told the story that we set out tell.”
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