D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai on the impact of ‘reserve dogs’ on Indigenous storytelling

D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai wouldn’t let an interview about his Emmy nomination go by without praising one of his Dog reservation co-stars: “I want to add one thing: there is a project that Devery Jacobs did with director DW Waterson, an incredible film called Background,” he says THR“It’s a sports movie about cheerleading. I want to point that out because she’s created an incredible project.”

Woon-A-Tai, who earned his first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy for the final season of the FX-on-Hulu series, also spoke with THR about his time spent on Dog reservation and what he sees of himself in his character Bear.

Rewatching some of the later episodes, I was really struck by how much Bear developed over the course of the series. How was that experience for you, and did it reflect your experience?

What was interesting was that when I auditioned, I had two scenes—four pages—and right off the bat, just in those two scenes, I really identified with Bear. I hadn’t even read the whole script yet. The writers’ room was all Native people, and they knew they wanted to tell their stories, and in telling their own stories, they also told the stories of a lot of other Native kids, including me. I immediately identified with Bear, and I see a lot of similarities in myself, in my cousins ​​and nephews, and with my family and friends. There are definitely a lot of bears in the world and in what we call Indian country, just like there are Willie Jacks everywhere or Elora Danans or Cheeses everywhere. So I felt like I really connected with that bear too, and to see his evolution was beautiful. We’re two different people – I grew up in Canada, in a big city, not in a reservation community in Oklahoma. So it’s very different, but in telling their stories, the writers told my story as well.

Can you remember any moments that particularly surprised you during the production? Dog reservation?

Everything was surprising. First of all, I came on the project very early, and they told us it was just going to be a limited series. So that’s what I expected. [going in]and then we didn’t know if we were going to get the job. But reading the script and creating what we created in the first episode, [I knew] I thought it would be a legend for our community. It would be something that we could defend and claim as our own. I didn’t know how it would be perceived by the general public, but even though it’s an Indigenous story, it’s also a human story. That’s why so many non-Indigenous people can relate to it. Even though we’re Indigenous and we’re telling our story, we’re also human, and a lot of people can relate to Bear.

You’ve played some of the most purely comedic scenes in the series with Dallas Goldtooth, who plays the wit. Can you talk about their performance?

It was cool. First of all, he’s an amazing man,…