How John Hawkes Ended Up a Double Emmy Nominee Thanks to His ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Song

Years ago, on the set of “Deadwood,” John Hawkes asked co-star Keith Carradine — who had a guitar with him at the time — to sing Carradine’s Oscar-winning song “I’m Easy” from “Nashville.” Carradine did, a memory Hawkes is eager to share when Carradine’s name comes up during an interview.

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“I loved that song and that movie,” Hawkes told IndieWire. “I remember watching him perform it at the Academy Awards — probably one of the only times I’ve ever seen the Academy Awards. And I loved [director Robert] Altman’s idea of taking these people who weren’t normally singers and writing their own songs.”

Hawkes himself has long written songs, but that aspect of his career is getting renewed attention thanks to a 2024 Emmy Award nomination for “No Use,” a song he wrote for his “True Detective: Night Country” character in Episode 5. Initially reluctant to write and perform the song (he credits showrunner Issa López for her genius and her persistence), he ultimately acquiesced, earning an Emmy nomination for both his performance as Hank and for Original Song. And the latter submission was his own idea.

“It may have been my suggestion to toss the song into the hopper,” Hawkes wryly admitted. “I remember speaking to my publicist, and she was saying HBO is interested in pointing you toward an Emmy nomination. And I thought, ‘That’s surprising and cool and of course I’ll help.’ I love the show and I love HBO. And it might have been me, I think it was, who said, ‘Hey, do they have an award for a song for the Emmys?’ That’s not really like me to pipe in, but I hold the song very dear, so I thought, why not? And through clerical error or otherwise, here we are.”

The song begins starkly and builds in power — even more radically thanks to López’s use of it as the connecting thread for three disparate storylines: Hawkes’ character heartbroken and mournful with a guitar in his living room, a protest that turns violent, and the exploration of an ice cave by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis’ characters.

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“Issa is a brilliant woman, and I’m glad she prevailed,” Hawkes said, adding that, in many ways it felt as if he co-wrote the song with his character. “His voice and his influence were part of it,” Hawkes said. “How to serve the story as a whole and serve the scene…. I angled toward that and got to work. And I whittled and honed and fine-tuned and tried to find out a concise way to get these ideas together. Hoping that [series’ composer] Vince Pope would punch the song out once it left the living room and add instrumentation and voices.”

He did, though Hawkes didn’t know it until the show’s premiere, when a stranger approached him and jokingly said, “I hope I didn’t mess up your song too badly.” The man turned out to be Pope, and he was the one who alerted Hawkes that his song stayed in the final cut. (Hawkes didn’t want to ask López directly.)

Hopefully, Hawkes, too, will have a co-star ask him to play “No Use” someday in the future. Listen to the full song in the video below.