At some point during the third season of the resurrected HBO show True Detective , I developed an itch. Itd creep up when I was watching elderly Wayne Hays (Mahershala Ali) sitting and chatting with true-crime documentarian Elisa Montgomery (Sarah Gadon), something he does quite often in the multiple timeline mystery series. My eyes fixed on the cowering former police officer and his persistent interrogator, I felt myself drawn to something else in the room. No, I wasnt concerned with Hays son Henry (Ray Fisher). I kept zooming in on the unnamed script supervisor parked behind the playback monitor the guy you can barely see in the screenshot below.

Who is this man? I kept thinking every time Elisa would grill Wayne on the details of disputed missing children case. Why is he getting so much screen time for a small role? And why does he look... familiar?

Then creator Nic Pizzolatto threw out a curveball.