More than ever, TV shows are under pressure to break through the media noise — to draw attention, infiltrate the cultural conversation and deliver hit metrics as soon as possible. How to do this? Ideally, with what might be called Game of Thrones moments — racy twists, shocks, spectacles, whodunit reveals. Imagine how exciting it must be to stumble upon such a fresh game changer. And how difficult it might be to reject it.
This very thing happened to Zahn McClarnon, the lead actor on AMC's Dark Winds, as his drama geared up for its season-two finale. The producers were excited about an idea that showrunner John Wirth (Wu Assassins, Hap and Leonard) had come up with involving McClarnon's character, Navajo tribal police officer Joe Leaphorn, shooting a man in the face. A little extreme, maybe, but Wirth thought it necessary. The man being shot was a dastardly villain, B.J. Vines (John Diehl), who had already caused the deaths of several innocent people, including Leaphorn's son. And it looked like Vines was going to escape punishment. Why shouldn't Leaphorn be allowed to serve up his own brand of justice?
"It's a bold thing to do," Wirth says. "I felt like on these elite dramas, these really shocking things happen, and that's what makes these shows a cut above anything else. We built the whole season around this."
But McClarnon had misgivings, and one morning he walked into Wirth's Santa Fe office, closed the door and leaned against the table. "I can't do it," he said. "I just can't do it." "Why not?" Wirth asked. Wouldn't this be the perfect Game of Thrones moment for a show that had been developed and was executive-produced by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin himself? But McClarnon stood his ground. "Joe Leaphorn wouldn't do that," the actor said. "It's just too much for a Native American to murder a white man. And I'm the only Native American lead on an American television series drama."
That stopped Wirth cold. McClarnon had zeroed in on something that Wirth had missed — something essential at a unique moment in the growth of Indigenous representation on television. What followed was a course-correction that reshaped the finale, provided a better basis for season three (premiering March 9), and, incidentally, demonstrated that McClarnon is more on top of the key elements of his show than most stars ever get to be.
It's taken a long time for him to get here. Born in Denver, Colorado, McClarnon arrived in Los Angeles to become an actor in the early 1990s, just after Dances with Wolves opened the door (a bit) for Native American performers. But parts were scarce, often stereotypes, and McClarnon found himself being typecast. "It was just a different time back then," he explains. "We didn't have cultural consultants. We didn't have Native writers. The storylines were usually white perspectives."
McClarnon (whose tribal affiliation is Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux) would try to speak up, "to put my two cents in regarding something cultural, or to say, 'We wouldn't do this,' 'We wouldn't say that,' 'We wouldn't present ourselves in this way.'" But his views weren't valued much. "I've had some moments where I was kind of told to shut up," he recalls. "Basically, 'You're a guest actor. Do your job, stay in your place, stay out of this.'"
In his decades on-screen — in more than 50 films and TV shows combined — things did get better, gradually. McClarnon booked more recurring roles (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) and larger series parts (Longmire, Fargo, Westworld) where he proved unforgettable, stealing scenes in even the smallest of roles with quiet intensity. So, when an adaptation of a best-selling series of Tony Hillerman novels about tribal police officers went into development as the crime thriller Dark Winds, the executive producers all agreed that McClarnon was right for the lead. "Hands down," says director and executive producer Chris Eyre (Friday Night Lights).
"Truthfully, I think Zahn being attached to the project was a huge reason the show got made," says creator–executive producer Graham Roland (Chickasaw), whose credits include Fringe and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. "AMC was aware of the books and liked the creative angle, but his involvement and his prior work really pushed it over the edge."
And McClarnon's moody take on Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn helped transform the show into a revisionist Western. "We had this idea of what a hero was," says Eyre (Cheyenne, Arapaho). "We all grew up with a certain type of code, based on a simpler time when right and wrong seemed to be clearer, and we've taken a look at that through a Native lens. What Zahn seeks to do, as an Indian cowboy, is to fight injustice, to fight crime, to do right by his tribe and his family."
"For me," Roland says, "Zahn is a throwback to older screen stars, the John Waynes, the older hero archetypes, the strong, silent types who can do so much with a gesture or a walk. I can't think of any other actor I've ever worked with — and frankly, not a lot of actors, period — who can do so much without saying a word."
McClarnon's facial expressions can be inscrutable, but they can also reveal a quick-witted intellect and deep emotional reserves. "I wish I was a Matthew McConaughey or one of these guys who are just so articulate about their process," he says. "The only way I can describe it is that it's intuitive. I know it's there, and I get in touch with it somehow."
If season one of Dark Winds revealed Leaphorn's heartbreak over the death of his son, and season two examined his anger over that loss, season three shades his emotional turmoil with guilt. "He starts to have a wider grasp of the moral gray areas of the world he lives in," McClarnon says. "This season is more about his self-understanding, his healing, reconciling his traumatic past and how that affects the people around him."
"Zahn is just magnificent," Eyre says, "because you can read Leaphorn's ethics and morals on his face. The only problem is, now he's challenged his own belief system."
When McClarnon shows up on set in the early mornings, the radios start buzzing with questions: "How's he doing this morning?" "Did he sleep well?" And most important, "Did he have his coffee?" "I like a redeye with some half-and-half," the actor says. "I definitely need that before I walk on set." This is how the crew takes the mickey out of the otherwise very serious actor: by teasing him about his caffeine fix and talking about a New Mexico bar they should start in his namesake's honor, called Grumpy Joe's.
McClarnon says his work in season three is more emotional and more personal than ever, with a storyline (not to be spoiled here) that recalls his own past traumas. One scene, he says, played out almost identically to something he went through as a child. "It affected me in ways that I've never been affected before, playing a character," he says. "It's hard to talk about. I'm still processing it, and I will for the rest of my life."
As he tapped into his own experience to bring Leaphorn's past to life, McClarnon felt fortunate that the crew — especially executive producer Tina Elmo, director Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga) and acting coach Rob Tepper — gave him a safe space to dig deeper and to fully let go. Elmo would hold his hand. Tepper would help him reset. Tremblay, who's also worked with McClarnon on Reservation Dogs, would clear the set, check in with him after each take and push him to go further. And when it was time for McClarnon to stop holding back and allow Leaphorn a big moment of anguished rage, he asked Tremblay to come and hold him. "I said, 'Okay, come here, touch me, hold my hand, hug me,'" the actor recalls. "That's how it was released, with the trust of another human being. You can only hope to work in situations like that.
"I'm not ashamed of this," he adds. "I come from a life full of addiction, alcoholism and trauma, and I'm not ashamed to let people see these things about me." Still, it was unnerving when he'd take his on-set feelings home with him. "You start getting into moments where you have a hard time telling what's real and what's not," he explains. "Like, 'Is this happening again? Is this real life right now?'" It showed him how far the craft of acting could take him.
McClarnon stretched himself off-camera, too. As an executive producer, he's very involved in story, casting and editing. For every episode, he and Wirth huddle next to each other on folding chairs with the blinds drawn, watching a producer's cut on Wirth's computer. "He's very particular about his performance," Wirth says. "I know him well enough now to know if something's bothering him, and I will stop, and we will talk about it." Sometimes this will result in a more effective take being used for particular scenes. "The cuts are always improved by his input," Wirth notes. "I try to show Zahn all different angles of what it is to be a producer. I think beyond this show, if he ever stops working in front of the camera, he could be a producer."
Producers, however, need to present solutions. So, when McClarnon didn't want to pull the trigger on season two's big finale, Wirth asked him to explain his position and suggest an alternative. Says McClarnon, "I had all these thoughts, like, 'I don't know if Joe Leaphorn would do this,' and 'What's it going to look like culturally?'" Given the Navajo cultural taboo against taking a life, McClarnon didn't think Leaphorn, a police officer with a strong moral compass, could justify taking somebody out, even if he believed the man responsible for the death of his son. And how would that play with Native audiences, if their one hero on television committed murder?
"Zahn is carrying a lot of water for all Native Americans, who are perennially underrepresented in all aspects of the entertainment business," Wirth notes.
"What that means is, as a numeric minority, for Zahn to be the one character who does something that's not right, it's exponentially more weighted," Eyre adds. "You have to be a lot more careful if you're the one. For him to play Game of Thrones and off people is an injustice to us. Save the one hero that we have. It would be a disservice to take that hero and make him an anti-hero."
McClarnon's alternative suggestion yielded several benefits: It created more moral ambiguity, it added historic precedence to his character's actions, and it opened the door for multiple storylines in season three, including an ongoing debate about who killed the villain — was it Leaphorn or nature? "Zahn said, 'What if I just drive him out into the desert and leave him there?'" Wirth recalls. "And I said, 'So you're murdering him by isolating him in the middle of the desert on a winter night? Isn't that the same thing as shooting him in the face?' And he said, 'No, not in his mind.'"
Emulating the forced march of the Navajo people who were compelled to walk hundreds of miles through the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico in the 1860s, Leaphorn was sentencing B.J. Vines to a version of The Long Walk. "That was his Indian justice," the actor says. "It's more dynamic. 'You did it to us, we're going to do it to you.' He at least was giving the man a chance to walk out of that desert."
Wirth thought about what script changes might be necessary. He called Roland to discuss what McClarnon had offered, and there was a long pause. "'I was prepared to hate it, but I love it,'" Roland told him.
"It wasn't really so much of a compromise, because it was more poetic," Roland explains. "Not only was it the right moral choice for the character, walking the line in a beautiful way, but it was much more cinematic." Had they filmed the original version, Leaphorn would have shot his gun, and that would have been that. The new version allowed him to drive away, with B.J. Vines walking off, and then allowed us to see Vines's body frozen in the snow. "This was a more nuanced version that said so many more things about the show," Roland adds.
So, Wirth rewrote the finale and discovered during that "happy accident" that there would be even more to play with in season three as a result. "It changes everything," Roland explains. "It becomes a different show."
McClarnon is delighted that he was able to make a substantial suggestion and be heard. "It wasn't a fight," he says. "You're not getting the door slammed on you, or anyone saying, 'No, we're doing it this way.' To even be in the position where I can sit down with the showrunner and go over cultural aspects of the show and not be shunned is a beautiful thing. I've always wanted to be in this position, and I finally am."
Dark Winds airs Sunday nights on AMC and AMC+
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #1, 2025, under the title "Role Model."
