‘I’m still me’: Get to know Kali Reis, a pro boxer from South Philly who starred in ‘True Detective’

Their hotel was only a few blocks away from the premiere, so they decided to walk down Sunset Boulevard to the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles. They were holding hands on an early January Tuesday as the ice blue image began to come into view. Once in full sight, Kali Reis and her husband, Brian Cohen, looked up and could not believe it.

They shared a visceral hug. Their eyes welled.

Her face was embossed on a 30-foot billboard as the costar in Season 4 of HBO’s crime-thriller series True Detective: Night Country with Academy Award-winning actress Jodie Foster.

It brought them back to the countless times Reis had to get up from where she was. The childhood trauma and the incidents that followed. Bouts with alcohol abuse.

Their neighbors tend to notice her a little more now. It comes with the territory of being on a hit show. As do a host of people who were once a part of her life and drifted away, who have tried to reenter her scope.

“She had family who did not care for her, try to talk to her, and the ones who did care for her, they don’t talk to her,” Cohen said. “I’m very protective of her because I know what she has been through. She’s a badass. She can beat grown men. She has in the ring. She has the strongest heart I know. But she never got any real support. When I saw her face on that building, it caught me. I cried. We both cried. We both know what it took for her to get here.”

It has been a winding odyssey for Reis, 37, a former six-time world champion boxer in two weight classes who has a career 19-7-1 record with five knockouts and once concurrently held the IBO/WBA/WBO super-lightweight (140-pound) world titles.

She and her husband live modestly in South Philadelphia and are the same as they were before Reis was being lauded for her portrayal of detective Evangeline Navarro in Night Country and Lincoln Town Cars were picking her up for appearances on the Today show and The View.

“Things have changed quite a bit as far as how I view life, how I work, and show up. My focus has gotten deeper; I’m grounding myself in my own reality,” Reis said. “I’m still me. What I don’t like are people around me acting differently.”

She embraces her past, regardless of how traumatic it was. She likes to say she grew up in an East Providence, R.I., area where she was not Black enough for the Black kids or Native American enough for the Indigenous cultures. Her struggles were many, from her time as a “raging” alcoholic who once woke up by a fire pit holding an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s like the Statue of Liberty holds the torch, to surviving a motorcycle accident, to allegedly being beaten up by a Providence police officer (a lawsuit later was settled), to being raped as a 12-year-old.

“The 12-year-old girl, you can say, is still there inside,” Reis said. “Part of the reason I am where I am now is promising that little girl that I would always protect her, no matter what, especially on the Night Country shoot, which wasn’t easy. For seven months, I was away from home in a different country doing something I have never done before around people that have done it their whole lives. There was a lot of pressure. I promised that little girl that I would make her proud.”

At 13, she said she found boxing as a channel for her rage. At 22, she turned pro. She last fought in 2021. Coming up, she often had to take fights on short notice. She was the perpetual B-side. Connecting with Cohen through the insular world of boxing changed everything, adding stability to her personal and professional life.

They first came together for her fight with Maricela Cornejo for the vacant WBC middleweight title in April 2016. She had one corner person. Most championship fighters have three. Cohen was there with multiple fighters on the card, so Reis asked him to work her corner.

She won, cementing their relationship. She says he has been her “no” person ever since, unafraid to say no regarding her dual careers.

She was carrying a six-fight winning streak and held the WBA and IBO light-welterweight titles and the WBO light-welterweight title in 2021 when she stepped back because of a recurrence of hormonal issues.

In recent years, Reis says her health has improved. She is seriously considering fighting again this summer in Los Angeles. And she is thinking big, going after Irish superstar Katie Taylor, the 140-pound world champion considered the best pound-for-pound female fighter in the world.

For the time being, Reis has been whirling on the media merry-go-round promoting Night Country, which is taking her all over the world.

In her few free moments, she has viewed her work with a smile for the first time in her life.

“Three or four years ago, there is no way I would have been able to say I’m proud of myself,” said Reis, who made boxing history as part of the first female fight televised on HBO, when she took on then-world welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus in May 2018. “I would have been worried how my success affected people around me. I actually thought if you were too successful, people would take offense to it. I would not have been as proud of myself, which I can say now, because I saw the entire [Night Country] series, and I am proud of what I did.

“I’m also not giving up boxing. I want to come back and fight again. I wouldn’t be where I am without boxing. Brian saw things in me I never saw in myself. I would love to fight again this year if it lines up the way it should. I still train and work out. I’m still a fighter. That side of me will never change. That fighter will be a part of me.

“It’s changed in the sense that my eyes are open wider. But I’m still getting comfortable talking about myself.”

Hovering and ever watching is Cohen, a boxing lifer who is considered one of the best trainers and managers in the women’s game. He knows her multilayered backstory. He has been there for the tears and the triumphs and been a grounding fixture in her growth.

When she could not get a fight, Cohen stood by her and made sure it happened. As recently as five years ago, there were times she was told she could not get on a local fight card because she could not sell tickets.

She likes to joke that she has not lived nine lives — she has lived 18.

“That’s when it hit me, and I’m not the most emotional guy in the world,” Cohen said, “when I saw Kali’s face up on that huge billboard walking to the Night Country premiere, I remembered all the hell Kali went through. I remember her telling me about the time she was raped. I wanted to kill the guy. When we moved her to Philly, it was just me. No one else. Kali had to sleep on people’s couches because no one would give her a place to stay.”

Jodie Foster had never heard of Kali Reis before seeing a picture of her. Night Country writer and director Issa Lopez found Reis through a 2021 indie film called Catch the Fair One, in which Reis plays a Native American former fighter whose sister is kidnapped and forced into sex trafficking.

Reis was nominated for the 2022 Independent Spirit Award for best female lead and won the Audience Award at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.

“Once Issa sent me a tape of her just speaking on Zoom, I said, ‘She’s the one,’ ” Foster said. “Suddenly [Reis’ Night Country] character of Navarro came into focus. Of course, Kali’s background as an athlete and a fighter is just what an actor needs. Discipline, tenacity, mind over matter, an instinctual ability to read others. …

“Kali definitely didn’t need me to help her find Navarro. She understood the character to a T. I was blown away during rehearsals because she had done such a deep dive and brought such skilled insights to the room. My only bit of wisdom for her was to relax and feel confident that she had this. That seems to be my role with younger actors. Their chill pill.”

The 120-day shoot ran from September 2022 to April 2023 in Iceland. Reis recalled the first read for Night Country. She was surrounded by filmmakers and Academy Award-winning actresses.

“The first time I saw Jodie, I turned into this 6-year-old for a second inside,” Reis said, laughing. “We were seated around for the first table read with Jodie Foster, John Hawkes, and everyone else, and I’m thinking, ‘Please don’t let me go first, please don’t let me go first.’ It was intimidating.

“So, naturally, you know who they asked to go first: me [laughs]. So I had to tell my process and my thoughts on my character. Jodie gave me a hug. What is really cool about her is she wants to collaborate with everyone. She’s a good captain, and a good captain naturally leads. Talking to her, working with her, it was like she was going to the gym with me. She is highly, highly intelligent. She made it a comfortable environment for me to work. She made everyone better. We learned things from her.”

It has been a good mix so far, the sage actress and the relative novice converging to make entertaining TV. This is only Reis’ third acting job, though she has other projects in production that are expected to come out this year, including Wind River Rising II and Black Flies, with Academy Award winner Sean Penn and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

And, apparently, she gained a big fan in Foster.

“The second I saw Kali on tape, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her,” The Silence of the Lambs star said. “There’s her beauty, of course. Her strength. Her style. But there’s something about her rawness that glues you to her. She’s real in a way that makes the audience stitch to her as the narrative focus. She carries the story. That’s just a gift that you’re either born with or not.

“Kali lets emotion emerge naturally from the depth of the character without getting bogged down with finding results. I also love how she never gives up, even after many takes in horribly uncomfortable conditions. She’s always willing to give it her best again and again.”

Added Reis: “Night Country pushed me to whole new sides. It changed me tremendously. No one knew I was assaulted by a Providence police officer when I was 26. Now I am playing one. I think I never expected anything from anyone. I never expected to be in the limelight.”

Kali Reis is front and center now.