Sterlin Harjo’s “The Lowdown,” which just premiered on FX (and by extension Hulu), is a shaggy dog mystery that follows Lee Raybon (played to rumpled perfection by Ethan Hawke), a self-proclaimed “trutharian” – a freelance journalist and bookstore owner who looks to expose the seedy underbelly of his beloved Tulsa, Oklahoma. After an exposé of a prominent Tulsa family leads to the death of one of the family members (Tim Blake Nelson), Lee becomes convinced that it wasn’t a suicide and is led down a path full of duplicitous politicians, white supremacists and wayward killers (also some lowlifes that make bootleg caviar).
It’s overflowing with mystery and humor, wittily and warmly crafted by Harjo, who also created the beloved comedy “Reservation Dogs.” “The Lowdown” will probably end up your new favorite show. If you aren’t already there by the end of the first two episodes, you’ll be there soon enough.
What might surprise you, though, is that Hawke’s character is based on an actual person – Lee Roy Chapman, a writer and historian who dug into Tulsa’s troubled past, most famously in revealing Tulsa founder W. Tate Brady’s involvement with the Ku Klux Klan and his role in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Harjo met Chapman while working for an organization called This Land Press.
“It was this beautiful of telling truths about the community and watching the community change for the better because of it and watching the community in the city develop an identity. And a lot of that was because we were telling the hard truths,” Harjo said. Some of those truths involved the race massacre, later highlighted by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 article for the Atlantic “The Case for Reparations” and Damon Lindelof’s 2019 “Watchmen” series for HBO.
At This Land Press, Harjo would make videos on these subjects, including a series called “Public Secrets.” He described it as him “riding shotgun” and filming Chapman “telling me stories and truths about Tulsa and things that people might not know.”
“I like that curiosity and the love for the city, it was infectious,” Harjo said. In 2015 Chapman died by suicide at the age of 46 but Harjo continued to think about his friend.
“The character was inspired him. I didn’t want Ethan to have to try to be him or anything. It was really just a jumping off point and inspiration for this character,” Harjo said, calling the character in “The Lowdown” an “homage to my friend who is no longer with us and who left a giant hole.” What was left was the idea of “people fighting to tell the truth” and “the spirit that was really sticking it to the man, not afraid to disrupt things.”
“When someone like that leaves, you feel that absence,” Harjo said.
Those initial ideas about Chapman were mixed with Harjo’s feelings about being a father at the time and “trying to raise a daughter,” along with knowing Hawke. Theirs was a creative collaboration built on “the love for literature, the love for truth, the love for music.” “Bringing all of those elements together was the show,” Harjo said.
Initially “The Lowdown” was a feature and as Harjo was finishing the script for that version, he started to think about Hawke for the role. When it became a pilot, he really started thinking about Hawke. And after the pair had worked together on an episode of “Reservation Dogs,” Harjo did what he described as “an Ethan pass.” “I’d known him long enough and worked with him enough that I felt like I could really try to do a couple of things that would attract him,” Harjo said. When he gave him the script, it came with a caveat.
Harjo told Hawke, “You know, we’re friends now. We talk about each other’s projects. Could you just read the script and give me notes?” (“That’s literally what I said,” Harjo double-underlined. “I didn’t ask him if he would play it.”)
The goal, according to Harjo, was “to see how he responded and if he responded to the character.” Hawke did.
“I sat there reading the thing, thinking Why is he not offering me this part? Why is he not offering me this part?” Hawke remembered. “He says, ‘Well, what are your thoughts on the script?’ I said, ‘My thoughts are that I should play that character.’”
Part of what Hawke responded to – and what makes “The Lowdown” so special – is its mixture of darkness and light. There are some really bleak things that are explored but always with a sense of humor. It’s a tonal tightrope walk for sure but one that is always pulled off.
“That’s my tone as a human. I can’t write anything without that,” Harjo said. “I think it’s probably my personality – on one hand I’m a goofball; on the other hand, I’m a brooder and I’m full of anxiety and off in the corner having an anxiety attack. I think that I’m both those things and that tone naturally sort of comes out of me.” Harjo said that he loves that mixture of tone in other people’s work. “I don’t try to do one thing or the other. I just let it all happen,” Harjo said.
“The camera has a lot of love for human beings, so we can show a lot of dark things, but when dark things are visited with love and respect and wit and a sense of humor, then you don’t feel any political agenda or any finger-wagging coming from the filmmaking,” Hawke explained. Instead, he said, you feel “observational love.”
Among the inspirations for “The Lowdown,” Harjo name-checked “Chinatown,” “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,” “Inherent Vice” and “Night Moves,” while Hawke was quick to jump in with “The Big Lebowski.” “All of these movies are in the same conversation,” Harjo said. “This show in particular is in conversation with all of these noirs and neo-noirs, and I think that, rather than acting like we invent the wheel, it’s about how do we embrace all of those influences, but then tell a new, specific story that takes place in a place that you know there hasn’t been a noir set, which is Tulsa, Oklahoma.”
Another touchstone for the project was “Devil in a Blue Dress,” both the movie by Carl Franklin and the original novel by Walter Mosley. Mosley actually writes a later episode of “The Lowdown” (one that, for full transparency, we haven’t seen yet). As it turns out, Harjo and Mosley go way back – Mosley was Harjo’s mentor at the Sundance Labs. Harjo appreciated Mosley’s “ideas of story and writing and how you put your own life in it.” As he started writing “The Lowdown,” he had realized that Mosley had been a part of other shows. He reached out to Mosley, even though the two hadn’t talked in 20 years.
“It was a dream, like, Would he even say yes to being in this writer’s room?” Harjo worried. But Mosley did say yes.
“When he came aboard, I was like, Oh this is going to work, because we talk a lot about noirs but ‘Devin in a Blue Dress’ is one of my favorite films. The fact that we had him on our team, conceiving of this, was incredible,” Hawke said. “I’m so glad you noticed that.”
Easy Rawlins, the character created by Mosley (and played by Denzel Washington in the film), appeared in 17 novels, including “Gray Dawn,” which was released earlier this month. And “The Lowdown” does have a certain weathered paperback feeling, with Lee Raybon the kind of character that you can imagine getting involved in countless mysteries.
“You probably feel it when you watch the show but we’re having a really good time. And Tulsa is ripe for stories. There’s so much of America in that city, so much of us is in that city, and it hasn’t been told,” Hawke said. “Noir is a great vehicle – it’s a fun murder mystery, but you’re also getting to meet real people and see real problems. And I love the idea of, like in the show, you see Lee’s obsessed with the novelist Jim Thompson and you see eight Jim Thompson novels. I feel like we could have a bunch of Lee Raybond books and each season would be its own novel.”
We can’t wait to turn the page.
“The Lowdown” airs weekly on FX and streams on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
