YOU CAN TRACE THE CHANGING ATTITUDES toward Native Americans in the career of Zahn McClarnon. First they ignored him. Then they gave him the brown stereotypes. Then they finally began to see him. In the last few years Zahn has reached a high peak, taking on roles that are deeper and more powerful. He’s become an avatar for a nation that might, finally, just a little, be reckoning with its past. To triumph in your 50s after his struggles is an act of walking in beauty.
After 20 films and countless hours of television, Zahn has emerged, to his astonishment, as a star. He is a natural scene stealer — you can’t manufacture his gift, that stillness, and maybe you can’t even explain or communicate it except by the doing.
At the end of the interview, Zahn asked me to turn off the recorder and said this is not for the interview. I agreed, and he talked about the depths of his substance abuse. The conversation became harder and more serious. He said some of his life was not recoverable. I think he was telling me that he learned from a darkness and hopelessness and scariness, which may explain what he can do now.
Then he added, We do this for our daddies. My father never saw my success.
I asked if I could include this in the interview.
He thought about it, and agreed.
Where do you come from?
My father was Irish, Polish, Scottish. My mother is from the Standing Rock Reservation. She was raised in North Dakota and she’s a Hunkpapa Lakota, and also German. My great-great-grandfather, who married into the tribe, was a German man named William Zahn, who I was named after. Well actually, I was named after his son, Francis Zahn. He married my great-great-grandmother, Kizawin, which means fighting woman in Lakota.
My father grew up in Denver, he was a beatnik. He was a jazz enthusiast, – enjoyed poetry readings, coffee shops. Loved Joan Baez, William Burroughs, Ginsberg. My mother moved from the Standing Rock Reservation to Browning, Montana, which is the Blackfeet Reservation, when she was a teenager. My father and my mother met in Denver when she moved there to live with her grandmother. They married and started a family. In 1966-67, we moved to Embudo, which is outside of Santa Fe. We lived down there for a year, so this area was in my DNA and I certainly feel a connection to it.
Do you identify as native?
I identify as a human being. Although I did grow up around my culture, on both sides, Native and Anglo.
Your first acting part was in Jesus Christ Superstar, but you can’t sing?
I was a pretty shy kid, I guess and it was terrifying to go audition in front of people and try to sing. I really can’t sing, but I absolutely loved Jesus Christ Superstar. I grew up with the album and the film and it was definitely an inspiration in my life at eight or nine years old.
How did you like being an apostle?
I think I fit into the cast because I had dark skin and long hair. It was a wonderful experience to be a part of a theater group like that, a group of people.
So where is your home? If you will, spiritual and practical?
I feel like a Gypsy, man.
Does Santa Fe feel like home to you?
Yeah, but so does Los Angeles and Nebraska. They all feel like home. There’s different reasons why they feel like home.
How was LA for you?
Well, I had lived in Los Angeles a few years earlier and gotten some sticky situations out there due to addiction. I ended up going back to Nebraska to kind of straighten my life out and that’s when I got into doing the play.
Like many folks breaking into acting, you must have run into some jerks.
At the beginning of my career, I think I ran into some directors who didn’t really want to collaborate and told me to do certain things. Just show up, hit your mark and do what I tell you to do. That’s not fun. You want collaboration. It’s an important part of the art.
On Dark Winds you play a Navajo, but you aren’t.
No I am not. I’m Lakota, I’m Sioux Indian, Irish, Polish and German. I’m basically a mutt.
It’s been an honor to to play a Navajo police officer who lived and worked on the Navajo nation in the 1970s. Authenticity and respect for the Navajo culture is my highest priority for the show. To achieve a level of excellence, we hired Navajo cultural experts Manny and Jennifer Wheeler. They manage the handling of the Navajo language and the cultural aspects from the writer’s room to post production. Jennifer has a doctorate in English and teaches English and Navajo Studies, as well as the language.
What method do you use to develop your characters?
I’m a good observer of people. Going to ceremony on the rez or seeing my uncle’s behavior, or seeing my friends on the reservation, people I went to school with, just grabbing little aspects of each of those people and trying to form a character.
Does it have to be real?
Yeah, it does. No one can explain it. That is a difficult question. People want to analyze talent, genius, creativity. Being an actor, you can’t explain what it is.
I’ve always been very aware and very conscious of people’s behaviors and stealing their little quirks and putting those into characters. Me and my buddies sitting around and kind of teasing each other in a way that native people tease each other.
It’s a cultural thing. It’s almost a way of letting somebody know that you give a shit about them.
It’s a way of expressing love, affection?
It’s kind of my way of expressing love. It really is. Yeah.
There are some intense scenes with your wife in Dark Winds. There’s so much silence and pain and inner solitude. It must take enormous concentration to express that.
It does. I had an incident the other night where I accidentally tripped. I cut my palm and I stubbed my fingers. Obviously everybody wanted to make sure I’m okay, but I was in this particular scene where I’m in a state of mind where I don’t want to leave that. It’s difficult to jump in and out of that. I want to stay in it, so I’m telling people to get away from me! Just let me finish the scene, even though I’m bleeding and I thought my fingers were broken. It takes a lot of focus and attention.
Sometimes I’ll use music to get me into that emotional state. I’ll put earphones on before the scene. A lot of what I do with Deanna Allison, who plays my wife, Emma, is to just look at her. There’s love there and there’s compassion there. It doesn’t take much for me to connect with another person, as long as they’re present with me.
Do you mind talking about your addiction?
No. I’ve struggled with addiction most of my life, since I was a young man.Alcohol and drugs.
Alcohol wasn’t introduced to our culture until a few hundred years ago. It has been in other cultures for thousands and thousands of years. I personally think there’s a bit of more of a low tolerance to alcohol within the Native communities.
How were you able to get sober?
I was thrown into my first rehab at 15-years-old. I didn’t stay sober, but struggled with it for many more years after that. Twelve-step programs, along with cultural ceremonies. We call it the Red Road.
Did it work?
I’m sober today. 24 years. I think that I’ve gotten more confident over the years and I feel like most days I belong where I’m at today. I’m feeling comfortable about myself and that I’m good enough to be there. At points in my career, I felt that I wasn’t good enough or I was a fraud. That’s part of the addiction thing – struggling with self-esteem. Today I feel much more confident about what I do and I think that is a big part of my work, my acting.
What are the stereotypes that piss you off?
Alcohol is one of them. As well as the stoicism, I guess. The things that we grew up with, in movies and film, what I grew up with. The feather and leathers, if it’s not done right, it can be very stereotypical.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Will Sampson broke some stereotypes. You see him as a stoic character, but that’s what he was playing. And then he breaks when he gives Jack Nicholson a piece of gum. It was a powerful moment for me, because at that moment, he’s a human being. He breaks and he becomes the hero of the movie. That was a beautiful moment. I think we’re seeing more of those moments today.
He’s also the survivor.
Yeah. He gets out.
He’s the one who sees the insanity.
He fools them all.
Have you had to play stereotypical characters?
Sure. It was difficult in the beginning, but I think we’ve come a long way. And I think that we’ve still got a lot of room for improvement, but people are allowing us to tell our own stories now. That’s great. Now, they’re allowing us to write our own stories, direct our own stories, and produce our own stories.
Natives have humor. We have Native directors, we have Native writers, we have these rich, full stories to tell. Finally, they’re opening up to other perspectives. I think that’s a beautiful thing. And if people are going to watch them, it’s going to make money. That’s what this whole business is about – money and profit.
Should films about Natives be directed and acted by Natives?
I think the Native person who grew up in this culture is going to bring more depth to that character than somebody who hasn’t.
What do you think of Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon?
I think Lily Gladstone is absolutely brilliant. She was the heart and soul of that film, as well as the other Native actors, William Belleau and Tatanka Means. I thought all the Native actors did a wonderful job and I was proud of them for their work. As far as Native actors, I didn’t see a bad performance. I think Martin Scorsese’s intentions were admirable.
On Dark Winds, we have a white showrunner. John Wirth. He listens to the voices of all the five Native writers in that room. He listens to us, the Native actors, he listens to the Native crew people. It’s a very collaborative thing.
We have Sterlin Harjo and Sierra Ornelas, those are the only two Native showrunners in this business. We need more Native showrunners. We need more Native executives. We need more Native producers. We’re getting there though. There’s been a big change.
Are you surprised by this newfound native success?
No. People have been hungry for different narratives. And we found a place within the film and TV business. People are very open to it and have welcomed it. Because this is different. They’ve never seen these stories. They’ve never seen these aspects of Native culture. And they’re like Oh, we didn’t know that.
We have to be honest in order to go forward.
I didn’t realize this interview was gonna get so philosophical…
Oh, I’m sorry.
No, that’s fine. That’s great.
Speaking of success, what’s a good – and bad – about yours?
I’ve achieved goals in my life that have given me more self-worth and self-esteem. I get to work with people who I admire. It has been beautiful that I’ve fulfilled a lot of my dreams and it’s because, again, we go back to the sobriety, I think I became a better person.
I’ve achieved some things in my life that I’m very, very proud of. Financially, you are able to do things like buy your mother a house. I’ve got a pretty good life.
Who are your acting heroes?
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of my favorite directors. Philip Seymour Hoffman was probably one of my favorites. I auditioned for a play with him, and it was an amazing experience. He was very open. He just blew me away, the way he was able to maneuver and flow through scenes and be very natural at it. You know, have these human things happening in those moments that are very relatable and very honest. I guess that’s what it is – honesty.
You know honesty when you see it. Daniel Day-Lewis is the same way. Sean Penn, who was a big hero of mine, Joaquin Phoenix, those are some of my biggest heroes.
What about the downsides of celebrity?
It’s not that I’m that well known, you know what I mean? I can go outside and have dinner. Somebody will come up and say hi, whatever. But, I don’t need bodyguards. I’m not Brad Pitt or Michael Jackson. I can’t imagine being Michael Jackson.
Sometimes I have issues with people in traffic, and I just have to be more careful these days with how I react around people.
Currently you’re here shooting in Santa Fe. How do you like it?
The mountains, the beauty, the culture – You have so many different cultures coming together here in Santa Fe. You have Pueblo Indians, you have the Northern New Mexicans, you have the art culture here. You’ve got money and you’ve got poverty, it just all comes together in Northern New Mexico in a beautiful way. I lived here when I was one-years-old in Dixon.
When I came back here in my 30s to do Longmire, I was like, I’ve been here before. There was something very familiar about this place. I felt a connection.
People might have the illusion they know you. They think you’re the sheriff or this or that. But that’s not the real you.
There’s an emptiness or hollowness about the celebrity stuff and starting to look at yourself in a different way. You can get wrapped up in it because you get all this attention. I’m happy that I’m a working actor, and I get to express myself through performing art, which is acting. The other stuff that goes along with it, I just really try to be conscious of it, try to be aware of that there’s nothing there. It’s very, very hollow. It’s very empty. I don’t allow myself to get wrapped up in fame. You can’t hang your hat on it.
Well, I feel like I’ve tortured you enough.
No, you haven’t tortured me, man. I just hope I’m coherent. I hope you can edit this shit together.
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Photo Gabriella Marks
