THE WAY SHE TELLS IT

DEVERY JACOBS plays an impulsive teen on Reservation Dogs, but the actress, writer, and director understands the value of control

- Roxana Hadadi

DEVERY JACOBS is clinging to the wall by her fingertips. We’re at a rock-climbing gym in Tulsa, and Jacobs is midway up a beginner bouldering route where every bulbous pink handhold is the size of a dinner plate. “That’s brutal,” she says as she grips one, searching along the wall with her right foot for a chip she can use to push upward. She has never done this before, and she’s determined—as you might be if you had trained as a gymnast for nearly 14 years. “I’m not competitive against other people,” she says. “But I personally like to be the best at things.” When she slips off one route, she gets right back on and propels herself all the way to the top.

Jacobs doesn’t waste time. It’s a quality that the actress, writer, and filmmaker shares with Elora Danan Postoak, her openhearted, resolute character on Reservation Dogs. The FX series, about four Native teenagers living in the fictional reservation town of Okern, shoots here in Oklahoma and follows Elora and her self-described fellow Rez Dogs—Bear Smallhill (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack Sampson (Paulina Alexis), and Cheese Williams (Lane Factor)—as they grieve a friend’s recent suicide and get into high jinks. They’re all trying to decide whether to stay on the reservation, where their community is supportive but struggling financially, or leave it for a world that could be less welcoming.