On “Reservation Dogs” and beyond, Devery Jacobs writes his own path

This item gets in some plot details for the fourth episode of FX’s “Reservation Dogs” Season 2, which aired Wednesday on Hulu.

When Devery Jacobs pitched an idea for what became her first credited episode as a writer on “Reservation Dogs,” she was a little hesitant because she didn’t want to give her character Elora any more tantrums.

“I remember prefacing it with, ‘Now I know Elora’s been through a lot, and I can’t believe I’m even saying that because how much else are we going to throw at this character? ? But I think Grandma Mabel must pass,” Jacobs recalled in an interview.

During the first season of the FX show, we learned that Elora’s mother, Cookie, died in a car accident when Elora was young. In the same episode, the show also revealed the tragic details of the more recent death of Elora’s friend Daniel, the fifth member of the show’s titular group of friends, a quartet of growing up teenagers. on a native reservation in Oklahoma. All of this unprocessed grief has created distance between Elora, Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor). In Season 2, which began streaming earlier this month on Hulu, each of them largely separated and did a lot of soul-searching.

In proposing an episode about the death of Elora’s grandmother, Mabel, Jacobs thought it would be meaningful to show Elora dealing with death “in the more common act of letting her go”, as opposed to sudden deaths. of Cookie and Daniel, she said. . “The idea was like, what if Elora experiences death the ‘right way’ and if it could actually be a healing experience for her?”

Co-written with “Reservation Dogs” co-creator and showrunner Sterlin Harjo, the fourth episode of the season, which premiered Wednesday, is a poignant meditation on death, grief, healing and community. As Elora’s grandmother, Mabel, lies on her deathbed, the entire reservation comes together to remember and honor her.

In addition to playing Elora, Jacobs, 29, who has been acting since she was a teenager and has written and directed several short films, has joined the show’s writing staff this season. From the start of the show, she had wanted to get more involved behind the camera, thinking she could prepare some kind of pitch for Harjo. But to her surprise, Harjo simply asked her if she wanted to join the writers room for the new season, and that was it.

Given his familiarity with the series, Jacobs said it was relatively easy to get started. through the experience of trying to bring Indigenous stories into the mainstream.

“I know or have known everyone in the room for years. The Indigenous film industry is so small and full of people who have been fighting for decades to break through and get projects done,” Jacobs said. “So many people who were part of the writer’s room this year and last year have been told by leaders that there’s just no appetite for Indigenous stories and they don’t will simply not be profitable – which we are now proving just isn’t true.

As a result, upon joining the writers’ room, she entered “an immediately comfortable space,” she continued. “And we all came with ideas. We were overflowing with ideas for stories we wanted to create before, or our own experiences growing up in each of our communities that we wanted to highlight.

When it came time to write this episode, Jacobs said she thought Harjo specifically assigned it to her because in the writers’ room she “was particularly passionate” about its major themes. One is how the multiple generations of women on the show come together to care for each other. She also felt it was important to explore “the joy, celebration, and comedy in our spaces around death in Indigenous cultures.”

“It ended up being a really great writing relationship with Sterlin, where he brought so much of his own experience of losing his grandmother and what that was like, that it ended up being an episode that I’m really proud as both a writer and an actor,” Jacobs said.

While it’s daunting to write an episode heavily focused on her character, she notes that “a lot of the episode is Elora absorbing what’s going on around her.” For example, we meet Aunt Teenie (Tamara Podemski), who hasn’t really been present in Elora’s life since she left the reservation and moved to town.

As Jacobs explained, the episode explores “all of the feelings that arise for Elora around this person, one being her feelings of anger and resentment for not being there; the other, to get a glimpse of a parallel between the Res Dogs and the rift their friend group faced with the loss of Daniel, and how this older generation’s friend group was impacted after Cookie’s death and Teenie’s departure.

Teenie’s life is also a glimpse of a different future for Elora, who at the end of season 1 tried to leave home and move to California, a dream of Daniel. However, earlier in Season 2, we find out that she barely made it out of Oklahoma because her car broke down.

With the return of Teenie, Elora “gets to see, for the first time, someone from her community who has decided to leave and is living a life on the outside, but who is still connected to the community,” Jacobs said. “So all of those things present all of the paths that Elora can choose to follow.”

Given the emotional weight of the episode, once she wrote it, it was important for Jacobs to be able to put aside the writing part of herself and focus on acting. Luckily, she was in good hands with the episode’s director, Danis Goulet.

“I thought she held it so carefully and really honored the story, the script and the words that we had written on the page,” Jacobs said of Goulet. “Before we shot it, we had a great conversation where I said to Danis, ‘I’ve invested so much in this episode, but at the end of the day, I’m letting it go now and passing it on.’ you, and I trust you. And I’m so excited to see what you bring to this episode. And I know you’re going to bring a lot to it. And now, it’s time for me to take that writer’s hat off and put on the actor’s hat, and now focus on this and see it from Elora’s point of view.

A particularly significant detail of the episode is that as a writer, Jacobs is credited with her full name: Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs. As she explained, throughout her career, she went back and forth between her names. Growing up in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk territory outside of Montreal, Canada, “I was raised Kawennáhere, and my whole family calls me that, my community calls me that,” Jacobs said. “But because I grew up right next to a big city, when I was going to gym, or going away, or playing, then I used Devery. And so I always used both names.

She chooses to use Kawennáhere on projects that feel more personal to her and “really touch my voice as an artist”, such as when she is a writer or a designer. “Because when I approach things as an actor, it’s a collaborative sport. It’s a space where, as an actor, I help the director or the showrunner tell their story,” she said. “As a filmmaker and coming from the creative side of things, that’s when I really draw from my personal life and who I am as a Kahnawake woman. And so I really felt that in this script, in this project, and so it was really meaningful for me to include my full name in the credits.

It’s a sense of agency that she brings to all of her work. Jacobs is very busy these days, with a lot “up my sleeve,” she said. She has written a screenplay which she hopes will become her first feature film. Somewhere down the line, she hopes to develop and be showrunner on her own series.

Meanwhile, she’s currently in Atlanta filming the upcoming Marvel show, “Echo,” co-directed by “Reservation Dogs” director Sydney Freeland, which premieres next year on Disney+. In 2023, Jacobs will also begin filming a film in which she has been involved as a producer for several years. And of course, if “Reservation Dogs” returns for a third season, she plans to be both in front of and behind the camera again, “so we can continue the story of the characters in this world and this community that we love. so much”. a lot.”

New episodes of “Reservation Dogs” air every Wednesday on Hulu.