Being a part of True Detective: Night Country was a milestone in Jodie Foster‘s career for several reasons. Foster, who is now 61, has been working in Hollywood since she was a toddler, but during a conversation with Robert Downey Jr. that was published in Variety, the two actors candidly discussed their starring roles in two HBO limited series this year: Foster’s turn in her first TV series ever, Night Country, and Downey’s multiple roles in The Sympathizer.

In their conversation, Foster revealed that being on the show gave her the opportunity to work with Issa Lopez, whom she called her “favorite director that I’ve ever worked with,” and it also presented her with one of the biggest, most terrifying stunts she’s ever done.

During their conversation, Downey asked Foster, whom he’s known for more than 30 years, about preparing for difficult scenes, asking her, “What part of the Night Country schedule did you always have circled, like, ‘That’s going to be hell’?”

Foster responded, “Falling through the ice,” referring to a scene during the series where her character, Liz Danvers, plunges into the Arctic water beneath a broken sheet of ice and struggles to come back up to the surface.

Foster explained, “I kept saying, ‘How are we going to do it?’ And they’d be like, ‘Oh, we’ll see.’”

When the time came to film it, “We shot that on a big tank,” she continued. “And it’s entirely dark, maybe 150 feet down. I work with a free diver, who’s like, ‘This is how we hold our breath in a way that allows us to keep going down. I’m going to be off to the side. When they say ‘Cut,’ I can swim to you and save you.’”
Photo: HBOFoster revealed that in order to make it look convincing that she was sinking through the water, she was weighted down so that she wouldn’t be able to float up to the surface. “They weighted every jacket so I couldn’t get to the surface, and I had big boots on. The thing I hadn’t anticipated was that I couldn’t see anything in front of me. It was actually my worst nightmare. Usually, it’s the opposite when you designate something like, ‘This is going to be bad.’ But when I got there, it was bad.”

Foster has previously referred to shooting this sequence as “the scariest day” and said that it was “panic-inducing,” especially because she couldn’t figure out how to get out of the tank on her own. But on a positive note, filming the series brought her closer to Lopez, whom she now calls a close friend, adding, “I think she’s my favorite director that I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with a lot of big guys.”