Los Angeles audiences were treated to something rare and electric at Brain Dead Studios: an early showing of FX’s upcoming series The Lowdown, followed by The Watch podcast live featuring a conversation with the show’s creative partners Sterlin Harjo and Ethan Hawke.
The event opened with the pilot episode of The Lowdown, a Tulsa-set noir series that blends mystery, journalism, and cultural history into a raw and rebellious story. The series stars Ethan Hawke as Lee, a “truthstorian” who runs a rare bookstore and becomes consumed with exposing the corruption lurking in Tulsa’s underbelly, peeling back layers of power most people would rather ignore. The character was inspired by Harjo’s late friend and collaborator Leroy Chapman, a journalist who dedicated his life to uncovering hidden histories of the city, including bringing long-buried truths about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre back into public view.
When Hawke first appeared on Reservation Dogs, it was meant to be nothing more than a small cameo. But once he agreed to join, Harjo couldn’t resist rewriting the script to give him the most significant role in that episode. The experience of working together on set confirmed what Harjo already sensed, that their creative chemistry was undeniable. “We just gelled,” he recalled. “I knew after that we had to do something more, whether it was a film or another project.”
That “something more” became The Lowdown. Harjo had been sitting on the story for years, revising the first twenty pages again and again without knowing how to move it forward. After the success of Reservation Dogs and his collaboration with Hawke, the time finally felt right. He reimagined the old script as a pilot and, under the guise of asking for notes, handed it to Hawke.
Hawke didn’t hesitate. From the first pages, he felt an immediate pull to the character of Lee and just knew it was for him. What Harjo had written wasn’t just a role, but a character alive with contradictions: driven and idealistic, flawed yet magnetic, carrying both the nobility and the self-destructive tendencies of truth-seekers who live too close to the flame. “I didn’t think twice about it. I understood this guy and wanted to play him badly,” Hawke said.
Their collaboration, as the live conversation revealed, has been more like that of bandmates trading riffs than that of an actor-director. Hawke described their creative process as “jazz,” improvisational and instinctive, with both men trusting each other to push scenes beyond the page. “We were like a traveling troupe,” Hawke said. “Sterlin would ask everyone to jump off the high dive, not knowing how we’d land, but he knew we’d get there.”
The Tulsa setting, both men emphasized, is more than a backdrop. “The history of Tulsa, the pain, the beauty, the crimes of America. It’s all right on the surface,” Harjo explained. By centering the story there, The Lowdown challenges familiar noir settings, such as New York or Los Angeles. Instead, it places audiences in a part of America rarely seen on screen but brimming with relevance and mystery.
The conversation ranged from the influence of 70s cinema like The Long Goodbye and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, to the rebellious spirit of independent filmmaking, and truth-telling at the core of The Lowdown. Hawke called the role one of the most rewarding of his career, precisely because it demanded vulnerability, humor, and grit all at once.
The audience at Brain Dead Studios was fully engaged during the screening of the first episode, and the energy carried into the conversation with Harjo and Hawke. Their creative partnership drew people in as much as the story itself. What they have built together is a show that feels alive and unpredictable, fueled by instinct and trust, and grounded in a fierce commitment to storytelling as both survival and resistance.
With The Lowdown set to debut on September 23, 2025, the Brain Dead Studios screening offered a first glimpse at a series that promises to be more than just a mystery. It’s a love letter to Tulsa, to truth-tellers like Leroy Chapman, and to the kind of art that refuses to settle for safe.
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