While the networks drown in derivative, probe-by-number cop procedurals, HBO has given its viewers a substantial criminal drama to sink their proverbial teeth into this winter: True Detective. Starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as bickersome Louisiana State Police detectives, the anthology series’ first season follows the duo as they track a serial killer, navigate their own demons, and weave unreliable yarns about some of their rogue tactics in an interrogation room 17 years later.

Following the show’s latest installment this past Sunday, we connected with Cary Fukunaga, who directed all eight episodes of the season, to discuss Yellow King mythology, that epic six-minute tracking shot, and why he decided to show this week’s gruesome deaths.

Note: If you have not yet watched this past Sunday’s episode, “The Secret Fate of All Life,” you may want to save this interview for later—major plot points from the recent episode are discussed ahead.

Julie Miller: First order of business: Whose idea was it for Matthew McConaughey’s character to be ashing his cigarette into the Big Hug mug during those interrogation scenes?

Cary Fukunaga: The prop department gave me a bunch of options for mugs and that’s just the one I chose. It’s funny that it’s become a big deal now . . . even my editor, Alex Hall, got a Big Hug mug for his birthday. The original is in my cupboard.

You cast Matthew McConaughey at the beginning of his “McConaissance”—before seeing any of his more recent dramatic performances in Killer Joe, Mud, or Dallas Buyers Club. Were you surprised by how well he was able to inhabit such a tortured character?

I wasn’t surprised as much as I was thoroughly entertained. We did the interrogation scenes in two or three days . . . before we did the rest of the 2012 scenes. We actually did 30 pages [of dialogue] in one day. It was pretty badass to watch him monologue and go off into the camera. Up to that point, he had been playing a more buttoned-up [version of his] character [in the flashbacks], intense still but like a boiling pot of water.

Did you have conversations with him about how he was going to mentally prepare for the character?

We had conversations about the nature of the character but you can’t micromanage a performance like that. The actor has to bring it. Matthew had his own preparation and he kind of looks at scenes like music. He has his own ways of locating his character, bringing himself into character and letting himself out of it. All of those interrogation scenes were on his shoulders—I just let the camera go.

I love McConaughey’s long hair and mustache in the interrogation scenes. How did that look come about?

That was in collaboration with [series writer/creator] Nic [Pizzolatto] and hair and makeup, just getting a sense of what this guy might look like if he is working in a rural bar in the middle of nowhere and wasn’t working too hard to maintain his physical or outward appearance. I had long hair at the time, so we played with the idea of him having a topknot but decided that just wasn’t the right look.

You’re coming off of back-to-back powerhouse episodes, between “Who Goes There” with that six-minute drug-den tracking shot, and “The Secret Fate of All Life” with the so-called shootout at Ledoux’s. Can you talk about prepping last week’s tracking shot a little?

I had a vague mapping of what I wanted to do for that sequence. But it took awhile to get to the actual housing project where we filmed, just because there was so much red tape to get permits. Once we got to the houses, we were able to copy the interior and create a really simple version on what of our sets—where we ate lunch and stored all of our props and furniture—we dug out a corner of that room and built the interior of that house so we could figure how that would work and we were able to rehearse that a lot. But the neighborhood itself, we didn’t get access to until about a weekend or two before. I went through there with the first A.D. and the stunt coordinator. We did a bunch of runs to figure out what the path would be. We had a day and a half to rehearse while we were shooting so there was not much preparation.