Blinked and you might have missed Michael Rooker’s debut in True Detective last week as the camera briefly lingered on a photo of his mysterious character, an Arkansas tycoon named Edward Hoyt. Though audiences still have yet to see Hoyt in action on the series, we did get a lengthier taste of what Rooker might have in store for us as the Big Bad via a menacing phone call that closed out this week’s episode. In the latest installment of Vanity Fair’* Still Watching: True Detective podcast, director Daniel Sackheim both teases what we might expect from Rooker in the finale and why it took him some convincing to cast his good friend in the role.
Sackheim confirms what others have noted elsewhere this season, namely that the character of Edward Hoyt and Hoyt Foods are “inspired by” a real-life power player in 1980s and 90s Arkansas: Don Tyson of Tyson Foods fame. In 1966, Tyson was named president of the company his father founded, and under his leadership the company grew from a multi-million-dollar company to a multi-billion-dollar global power. Tyson plunged his fingers deep in the political landscape of Arkansas and, later, when his early investment in local politician Bill Clinton paid off, had strong connections to the White House as well. Sackheim admits that Rooker—who often plays intimidating shit-kicker types—didn’t strike him as the right match for a “captain of industry.” That’s when series creator Nic Pizzolatto introduced Sackheim to footage of the real Don Tyson.
“He was a guy who came to work every day in a khaki jumpsuit and a trucker hat,” Sackheim says, “who was as much on the chicken line as he was in the corporate office.” Tyson got his start in the family business as a chicken catcher and truck driver, prompting Sackheim to call him a “self-made man.” As self-made as you can be with your name on the logo of the company, anyway.
Though Hoyt’s not-so-veiled phone threats to Mahershala Ali’s Wayne at the end of Episode 7 were enough to chill Detective Hays to the bone, Sackheim further explains that Don Tyson—and by extension Edward Hoyt—is not a particularly “sophisticated or eloquent” figure. He expects Rooker’s performance is, perhaps, not what audiences might have pictured Hoyt to be. No wonder True Detective kept this particular casting under wraps. Sackheim calls Rooker’s turn in Episode 8—where he’s due to square off opposite Ali—“magnificent.”
The Don Tyson connection isn’t the only real-world inspiration to enhance the authentic Arkansas flavor of True Detective Season 3. Pizzolatto’s childhood in Louisiana may have given Season 1 its potent bayou vibe, but the show-runner went to graduate school at the University of Arkansas, and his fascination with a state that, Sackheim says, was very “near and dear” to his heart resulted in this season’s sideways examination of the power structures in place there. Though Sackheim says he “never asked” if the character of Attorney General Gerald Kindt was inspired by real-life Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton, the many controversies swirling around the Clinton dynasty have seeped into the Season 3 narrative.
Take, for instance, Elisa’s (Sarah Gadon) Episode 7 insistence that pedophilia and sex trafficking are somehow connected to the disappearance of Julie Purcell and the murder of her brother, Will. This theory of Elisa’s—which seems largely dismissed by the episode itself—is overtly connected to the debunked Franklin conspiracy, but also, less directly, to the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy that dogged the 2016 Hillary Clinton election campaign.
Similarly, with the Clintons on the brain, it’s hard to avoid thinking of the Whitewater scandal of the 1990s that linked the White House to both a real-estate controversy back in Arkansas and the death of Clinton’s deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. Despite many, many, many investigations, there’s no evidence that Foster’s death was anything other than a suicide. But that hasn’t stopped many notable figures over the years—including Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh—from implying some sort of staged conspiracy and cover-up. As we learned this week on True Detective, staging suicides seems to be one of Hoyt’s favorite ways of eliminating troublesome figures like Tom and Lucy Purcell.
Even more pertinently—though still firmly in the realm of conspiracy—is the case of the Boys on the Tracks. In this week’s episode, Elisa points out to Wayne how many people around the Purcell case went missing or turned up dead over the years. Tom, Lucy, Harris James, Cousin Dan, Brett Woodard, etc.
In 1987, 17-year-old Kevin Ives and and his best friend, 16-year-old Don Henry, were found dead on train tracks in Alexander, Arkansas. Initial autopsies alleged that the boys had fallen asleep on the tracks after reportedly smoking 20 joints of marijuana. But other evidence—including, allegedly, stab wounds—indicated that the boys, much like Will Purcell, were likely killed elsewhere and dragged to a second location, where their bodies were found. The case remains unsolved, and is considered one of the most unsettling cold cases in the nation. Mara Leveritt—an Arkansas reporter who famously wrote about the West Memphis Three and is something of an inspiration for the Amelia character—wrote The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial, and a Mother’s Crusade to Bring Her Son’s Killers to Justice about Linda Ives’s quest for the truth about her son’s death.
Ives and a number of others who have looked into the case believe that the government was somehow involved; the most popular theory among those who favor conspiracies paints Kevin and Don’s deaths as a massive cover-up after the boys stumbled upon a drug-related government operation. Clinton was the governor of Arkansas at the time—so, as you can imagine, his name has been tied up with this case in certain circles for years. Much like the Purcell case, back in the 1980s, a number of people who either knew about the Boys on the Tracks or were slated to testify died mysteriously. While it’s true a number of people of interest died for a number of different causes, no direct link to the case itself has ever been proven.
Though he may not be trying to make any kind of pointed commentary about the Clintons via the lurid crimes of True Detective Season 3, Pizzolatto loves broad conspiracies based on real-life horrors and shadowy government cover-ups. When it comes to writing about Arkansas in the 80s and 90s, there’s no way to do just that without invoking some of the state’s most powerful and famous families: the Tysons and the Clintons.
