By his own calculations, writer-director Noah Hawley has generated 51 hours of off-kilter TV drama inspired by the Coen brothers' 1996 film, “Fargo.” A crafty wordsmith who writes novels between television shows, the Austin, Texas-based creator and showrunner excels at telling fake true crime stories from the heartland, populated with dead bodies, homespun wit, and morally conflicted characters. Since its launch in 2014, the series “Fargo” has earned 55 Emmy nominations and six wins.
For the fifth season of “Fargo” on FX, Hawley and his team applied their usual dose of dark humor touches, including an eyepatch-wearing lawyer named Danish Graves (Dave Foley), puppets, an “Only in house” that involves throwing flames. oven cleaner, body-switching antics in the hospital, and a villain who rises naked from a hot tub to ask visiting police officers, “Do you mind if I'm discussing matters of state in a wet recess?”
The show also struck somber notes by following the journey of Minnesota housewife hero Dot Lyons (Juno Temple) as she fights to free herself from her brutally misogynistic ex-husband, North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm). .
Hawley recently returned from Thailand, where he is overseeing production on a new “Alien” series based on the sci-fi film franchise. Speaking via Zoom from a hotel room in Beverly Hills, Hawley explains how he built this year's “Fargo” saga around themes of domestic abuse, debt and cookie dough.
The fifth season takes place in 2019, making it the most contemporary “Fargo” story to date. What did you have in mind while writing in 2022?
The story landed at a time when we were going backwards in the fight for women's rights and the presidency that we had endured and all that, so [I wanted] creating Dot as this character who just couldn't stand it. There is a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg that says, “We are not asking for special treatment. We are just asking for the boots to be taken off our necks.” I think people responded to the show because Dot wasn't a victim. She was witty, creative, she made breakfast for her son, but she said, “No, you're not going to treat me that way.”
Did the Coen brothers' film “Fargo” influence the way you developed Dot Lyon?
In Joel and Ethan's “Fargo,” a woman's husband sends two men to kidnap her. You have the characters of Bill Macy, Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare, all fully realized, they all had names, and my memory of Bill Macy's wife is: The Wife. She's beating, then they put a bag over her head and then she's dead. And I thought, what if we told a story of his Point of view?
Juno Temple as Dorothy “Dot” Lyon and Jon Hamm as Sheriff Roy Tillman.
(Michelle Faye/FX)
Dot beats cookie dough at the end of Episode 1, pretending to her husband and daughter that everything is fine after she punched a police officer at a crazed PTA meeting, burned a man's face with a homemade flamethrower and survived a bloody shootout. Still, she strives to be “Nice in Minnesota.”
The Coens coined the phrase “Minnesota Nice” as this idea of a polite society where it's: keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling, and then someone dies, right? But in 2022, I looked around and thought, “I think people [have] “I stopped smiling.” We are in this situation 1719022636 where the basically decent people we've been defending on this show suddenly follow the school president into the parking lot and threaten to kill them. But decent people and a sense of civility still exist: how are we going to get back to where we left off? That's really what the show struggles with.
Sheriff Roy Tillman considers Dot his property and disrespects the rule of law even though he is running for re-election. Did you want to incorporate political subtext into season 5?
On a script level it was a little more open, but then I found myself in the editing room saying, “I don't need Roy Tillman to say that stuff.” I think we understand him simply because of who he is and what he represents. Look, I live in Austin, Texas. I want to tell stories for everyone, so I hope “Fargo” can be seen across the political spectrum. I'm not trying to be political, but I think there's a conversation about civics we could all have.
The battle between Dot Lyon and Sheriff Roy Tillman is investigated by Indira (Richa Moorjani), the local deputy who is burdened with debt. Why was it important to incorporate debt as a theme for season five?
Because I feel like it's something that everyone has and that no one talks about. It is such an overwhelming element in so many people's lives. The ugly side of the American dream is that we morally judge people for not being rich.
Speaking of rich people, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Dot's imperious mother-in-law, millionaire debt collection magnate Lorraine. Her speech and demeanor are so stylized that she almost seems as if she had parachuted into “Fargo” from a completely different show.
Lorraine is a self-made woman. It's not specified in the script, but I think she comes from rural Illinois or something and she's created this effect, this mid-Atlantic accent as a way of classifying herself. Jennifer and I talked about this, and we talked about [the late conservative talk show pundit] William F. Buckley, the withering disdain he had, the way he talked down to people, his erudition. Jennifer took it very seriously.
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Dot's imperious mother–in–law, millionaire debt–The collection magnate Lorraine. She forgives three men's debt so they can change their names to Roy Tillman. They all show up at a campaign debate and humiliate the real Roy Tillman. How did you come up with that dirty trick?
Honestly, that idea came from Russia. They do the craziest things there. I saw a story where, to beat the leader of the opposition party in this town, they got two guys to change their names to his, so that when people go to vote, they only have a 30% chance of voting for him. The right one.
Are you kidding!
Not only is it real, but someone in America just did that in a congressional race; They made people change their names. [With “Fargo’] I thought that this conceited man appearing in a debate and then becoming a laughing stock seemed like justice.
