Kali Reis Claims Another Victory

Twelve years ago, while augmenting her boxing career with nightclub security work in her hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, Kali Reis says she was assaulted by a police officer. Her 2015 federal lawsuit against the city accused the officer of punching, pepper-spraying, and handcuffing her when she tried to give an unconscious co-worker first aid after a fight at the club. In 2017, the City Council Claims Committee settled with Reis, and the officer left the force. In her typically self-deprecating way, Reis calls the experience “funny,” then catches herself and reverses stance on the grim piece of personal history. When she speaks about how that man “had me convinced that I did something wrong,” about how it was another moment in her life when she felt the constrictions of being “the only female in the room, the only woman in a man’s world,” about the yearslong legal battle to ensure “he doesn’t do this to anybody else,” Reis recounts a drawn-out, thoroughly unfunny experience. “It’s one of those things that comes full circle,” she says. In taking on Trooper Evangeline Navarro, the character she plays on True Detective: Night Country, Reis saw a chance to find power in an occupation that previously harmed her. “Sometimes I laugh and wonder if he’s gonna watch the show and be like, Wait a minute.”