Reservation Dogs Star DPharaoh Woon-A-Tai on the Shows Bittersweet End, Tell

Posted by Martina Birk on Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Of all the feel-good stories this Emmy season, none feels better than the overdue recognition of “Reservation Dogs,” the FX coming-of-age comedy that earned four nods for its third and final season after the first two installments failed to break through. One of those nominations went to D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the 22-year-old Canadian actor who plays protagonist Bear, a member of the namesake crew of Native teens in Okern, Oklahoma.

Bear begins the series devastated by the recent suicide of his best friend, Daniel (Dalton Cramer), and schemes with the rest of the Dogs to abandon their home for California. He ends the show with the blessing of his dubiously qualified spirit guide, William Knifeman (Dallas Goldtooth), at peace with himself and appreciative of his community. Woon-A-Tai spoke with Variety about growing up while filming, working with showrunner Sterlin Harjo and what lessons he took from a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

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You were still a teenager when you were first cast, right? 

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Exactly. I was 18 years old, just about to turn 19. It was right before the pandemic. I got an audition for a self-tape that was four pages total. Just off of those four pages alone, I felt connected with Bear. I hadn’t even read the script yet.

I did the audition and got a callback. Then they flew me out; my first time in California. I was really nervous. The actor who plays Daniel — Dalton Kramer — it was me and him who were the only two left going for Bear.

I remember thinking to myself, “OK, I gotta do something that stands out. I gotta be cool.” Because prior to going into the room, all you hear is laughter. It was my first time hearing Sterlin laugh. Sterlin has this hyena-type of laugh. It’s very contagious. My audition scene was the first scene in the first episode where Bear is talking to the camera. They had a camera on a little tripod, and they wanted me to speak into it. I thought that was really awkward. So I asked them if I could pick up the camera and move around with it. I picked it up, did my scene and, to be a little bit different, I pointed the camera at them and made them act like they were the rest of the Rez Dogs.

Besides the hyena laugh, what was your relationship with Sterlin Harjo like?

Sterlin is one of my favorite directors I’ve ever worked with. I definitely see him as an uncle, and hopefully, he sees me as a nephew. He trusted [casting director] Angelique Midthunder to get it right. Through trusting her and also trusting us, he let us do a lot of our own thing — say the lines how we want, maybe add a little improv. Paulina Alexis [Willie Jack], she had a lot of improv lines. He collaborated with us, and helped us tell the story how we thought of it, too, because we really, truly knew our characters.

Harjo chose to end the show on his own terms. What was going through your mind when you got the news? 

It felt like we’re all, as one big family, going to an amusement park and having the time of our lives, and then our dad tells us we have to go. We were right in the heat of it, riding the high, and then all of a sudden, he’s like, “Yeah, we’re about to end it.” So it was definitely bittersweet, but I understood completely why he felt like it needed to end. Sterlin wasn’t creating the show — and I can say, as an actor, I wasn’t making the show — just for the money or just because. We knew that every story had a beginning, middle and end, and it deserved a proper ending.

One of the themes of the final season is community. Why was it important for the show to highlight that in its final episodes? 

I like to think that was the idea from the beginning. These guys really did blame the death of their best friend on the community around them. They blamed it on their surroundings. Bear especially — he always felt like the grass is greener on the other side, and that he would have a way better life living with his father in California. Once he goes over there and faces reality, he comes to realize that the thing that was keeping them together, the thing that was healing them is their community back at home, the thing that they thought they needed to run away from.

It was beautiful to end the series on a funeral episode, because it shows how Native communities treat death, which we do really differently compared to different Western civilizations. One aspect is coming together and celebrating not just the death, but the life. … Just like we were celebrating the life of [medicine man character] Fixico, we’re also celebrating the life of “Reservation Dogs.” So it was a very beautiful thing.

Do you have your own idea of what the rest of Bear’s life might look like?

Hopefully, one day we’ll get to actually see! I think Bear found what he was looking for, which was a sense of belonging and something to claim and to be proud of. It took a long time — three seasons — but I feel like that thing is Oklahoma and his community. I think he will stay in Oklahoma. I don’t know how the relationship with him and Jackie will go, but I definitely know that where Bear is, is where he should be: with his community.

Can you tell me about your last day on set? 

Well, the whole last day on set was the funeral episode, which was beautiful, because we really got to be with everybody again. But the last few minutes, last few hours, were just all tears. Especially when they said “cut.” Everybody on the crew knew how important this was and how big it was. Just like how I feel like I’m a part of the show, it’s their show as much as it is mine.

My last scene was with William Knifeman, which was really cool because, throughout that last season, Bear was so alone. It felt so weird, because playing Bear, I was getting used to expecting William Knifeman to come give me some guidance. But he wasn’t there. So to have that last episode with Dallas Goldtooth, with William Knifeman, it was really good. Plus, I didn’t know how to whistle! I don’t know how to whistle for shit. I just can’t. So actually, the last 30 minutes was having Sterlin Harjo teach me how to whistle at night, which is like, not good. It’s some bad medicine right there. That calls bad spirits. So, I was nervous. That was my ending, really. It was a lot of the crew laughing at me because I didn’t know how to whistle! It was pretty anticlimactic.

“Reservation Dogs” is so unique. What’s it like to transition from that set to more mainstream Hollywood projects? 

One thing that it’s taught me moving forward with other projects, especially Indigenous-centered projects, is that it has to be with an Indigenous writer and director. Before, I was just so used to working with a lot of non-Indigenous people. “Reservation Dogs” has taught me how important it is that we are the ones to tell our stories for us. Nobody should tell our stories on our behalf. That’s been going on for too long. We’ve had too much misrepresentation because of it. Moving forward, I am very much going to stick with telling Native stories through the Native lens.

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