‘Fargo’ Star David Rysdahl Reveals Original Film Easter Eggs and Teases ‘Alien’ Series
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[This story contains spoilers from Fargo season five, episode four, “Insolubilia.”]
For the last five years, Fargo star David Rysdahl has been quietly turning in a number of quality performances, and now the audience and industry alike are catching on.
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Beginning with Dead Pigs, Cathy Yan’s feature directorial debut premiered at 2018’s Sundance Film Festival garnering Rysdahl and the rest of the cast a special jury prize for ensemble acting. But despite the recognition and rave reviews, the foreign-language film failed to receive distribution until a year after Yan’s second feature, Birds of Prey, had been released by Warners in 2020. That same year, Rysdahl stood out again in another Sundance darling, Edson Oda’s Nine Days.
Everything would soon change for Rysdahl in 2022, when he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Black Mirror season six and Noah Hawley’s fifth season of Fargo. In the latter project, Rysdahl plays Wayne Lyon, a well-intentioned car salesman, husband and father, who is meant to be a pure-hearted version of William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in the Coen brothers’ 1996 film. Wayne’s wife, Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple), is even abducted like Lundegaard’s wife was, and they both have a child named Scotty.
Rysdahl, a Minnesota native himself, initially held off on revisiting Macy’s work until he had a handle on his own character.
“When you play a car salesman whose wife is abducted, of course, you are Jerry Lundegaard in some way. You’re playing in the shadow of that great performance. But I didn’t want to watch [1996′s Fargo] too early and eclipse what I was trying to do,” Rysdahl tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So, once I established a little bit of Wayne … I started to steal things as an homage.”
Fargo (1996) isn’t the only classic film that Rysdahl and Hawley will be paying homage to, as the actor also joined the showrunner’s highly anticipated Alien series. Rysdahl spent one day on the Thailand set for camera tests before the production was shut down due to the strikes. “Noah, in a similar fashion to Fargo, takes the [1979 Alien] movie and asks, ‘What’s the DNA of this? What’s the world perspective? What themes are we tackling? What was the original intent of this movie? Let me see if I can play with that in a new way,’” Rysdahl says. “So he’s doing a really interesting job of that on Alien, and it’s going to be a very different but very exciting view of what the original movie was.”
With Oppenheimer now considered to be an Oscar frontrunner, Rysdahl is also looking back at his time playing Donald Hornig, a chemist who played a key role in the real-life Manhattan Project. Rysdahl notes that he and his real-life counterpart both served a similar purpose.
“I didn’t sleep at all the night before my first day on set. But Cillian [Murphy] was right there, and he was like, ‘Hi, I’m Cillian.’ When your lead is that good of a guy and just a down-to-earth mensch, it’s really easy to get behind him,” Rysdahl recalls. “As actors, we were just there to support this iconic actor’s performance, and that’s exactly what the Manhattan Project was. So I had a small part, but it was a profound set to be on and one that I’ll bring with me to every other set.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Rysdahl also discusses Wayne and Dot’s marriage in Fargo season five and how genuine her feelings are, and how he played out Wayne “awakening from two dreams: The fog of his brain and also the fog of his life.”
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So, according to the Internet, you grew up in Minnesota. Did you have the inside track on the Fargo accent?
Well, I moved to New York, and like a lot of actors, I worked at a restaurant. And I would say things like, “Are you guys going out to your boat?” (Rysdahl pronounces “boat” in a very Fargo-y way.) And then everybody would say, “Boat?” So I definitely remember moving here and still having a couple of the o’s, but I honestly love the accent. My dad’s got it. I am from a German part of the state, and so that accent is a little different from my dad’s, because he grew up in a more Scandinavian part of the state. We’re getting really in the weeds here about Minnesota, but the majority of the accent comes from Norwegian and Swedish kind of influences. So, going into the audition, I stole a lot of the accent from my dad and my uncles, but I grew up with a little bit of it where I’m from, too.
Wayne is rather meek and mild, but his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is very domineering. So he probably walked on eggshells around her as a kid and it carried over into adulthood. Am I in the same ballpark as you?
Without a doubt. He’s the only son, and while he looked up to his mother, I think there was a moment where he decided he wanted to live a different life. Juno [Temple], Jennifer and I talked a lot about what the wedding was like. Obviously, his mother did not want him to marry this woman [Temple’s Dot], but he stood up to her and didn’t want to take her trust money. Of course, he grew up with privilege, but Wayne wanted to create his own lane. So he’s kind of done that and, in his head, he’s created this idealistic, perfect combination. His wife and his mother don’t like each other, but he’s always going to be positive. Of course, the season makes him confront it in a whole different way, but you’re totally on track with how I saw him growing up. There was a moment where Wayne was like, “I want to try something else and marry this woman.” And while the wedding was difficult, Wayne’s whole philosophy on life is to kill them with kindness, so this season really tests that idea.
His wife, Dot, is also the alpha in their marriage, but she genuinely seems to love Wayne’s gentle, Blue Bloods-watching soul. Do you also get the sense that Dot has real feelings for Wayne and that he’s not just a sanctuary from her murky past?
Yeah, Juno and I talked about this a lot. She maybe chose Wayne in the beginning because he was the antithesis to everything she was running from, but it’s much more interesting if she ends up falling in love with him. And so I think this season really tests that, too. She can’t just keep running. She has people, her daughter and her husband, that she actually cares about. I mean, why not just keep running? What stops Dot from just becoming somebody else somewhere else? It’s obviously got to be her daughter, but I also think her love of her family keeps her from doing what she did before and just starting a whole new life. She could if she wanted to, but she ends up going home to make Bisquick. She’s continually living in this dream that she’s concocted for herself. So she has to love it on some level or it doesn’t make sense, and it’s a lot less interesting to watch a loveless marriage. At the beginning, she chose Wayne because he was easy. But there’s genuine love there now, which is more interesting and more fulfilling.
You referred to Wayne as the “antithesis” of Dot’s ex-husband, Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm). It’s implied in the writing, but did Noah ever define it in those terms that your character and Hamm’s character are meant to be at opposite ends of the spectrum?
I felt that way when reading it, but Wayne doesn’t know Roy. So, for me as an actor, it’s hard to jump in and play an antithesis of a character I don’t know. I would rather just be it on my own terms, but the writing was already pushing it towards that direction. Noah was very clear about not making Wayne a joke. He is all these things you said. He doesn’t like conflict. He’s always going to choose to be positive and chipper in the face of adversity and conflict, but there is a strength to Wayne. If he doesn’t have at least a little bit of a backbone, then we’re not going to care about this relationship at home. We’re going to just be like, “Dot, take your daughter and leave. Why not?”
In the writing, Roy is a very obvious foil, especially when you see him and his wife in bed in episode three. So these are two different relationships, and that’s what I find so interesting about the season. It’s about how to be a man, how to be a woman and how to be in a loving relationship with each other where you actually value each other and respect each other. That’s why it’s also important for me to watch Dot and Wayne have love, because if they don’t, then, what are we saying to society? We’d just be saying, “Oh, you have to be either this man or this man,” and there’s no real way to actually be in a respectful, loving relationship. That’s pretty nihilistic, and that’s not part of the Fargo-verse and what Noah is trying to say.
Wayne is also a car salesman, and that obviously calls back to William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in the Coen brothers’ original Fargo (1996). The same goes for their abducted wives and children named Scotty. How wrapped up did you get in comparing Wayne to Jerry?
Beforehand, I was like, “Should I watch the movie again?” I went back and forth on it, and then, after that first scene in the car dealership, I watched it. I watched it over the holidays last year, and then I was like, “Alright, now I know Wayne enough that I’m not going to just copy something.” I already knew the movie very well, so I already had him in me. But when you play a car salesman whose wife is abducted, of course, you are Jerry Lundegaard in some way. You’re playing in the shadow of that great performance, but I didn’t want to watch it too early and eclipse what I was trying to do. So, once I established a little bit of Wayne and then watched it, I started to steal things as an homage. In episode seven, you’ll see that I was trying to do the exact same thing that he did when he was penciling the little circles. So there are these fun little Easter eggs and different wardrobe choices throughout, and they were all playing in that world. I just needed to establish him in my head before I could go and play with it in a deeper way.
From maniacally making pancakes to almost superhuman survival skills, Wayne has now seen a markedly different side of Dot, and despite his mother’s insistence that she’s bad news, Wayne won’t hear it and he ignores all the red flags. Well, that comes back to haunt him in episode four when his family is attacked by Roy’s goon squad and he’s electrocuted by one of Dot’s household traps. So now he’s quite warped, as we see in the hospital room, and he’s going to have to deal with this condition for a bit. Was that a tricky swerve to take mid-way through the series?
Yeah, when I talked to Noah, I was like, “Where is his brain?” In that first hospital scene, he’s really loopy. Of course, I did research and watched people who’ve gone through severe electrification. In my own life, I could only compare it to when you’ve maybe had a little too much to drink one night and then the next day, you’re like, “Wow.” There’s also the slow realization of what he’s dealing with now. His brain is not only fried, but the reality that he had been living with has also been shaken. The idea of who he is in relation to his wife and who his wife actually is has all been shaken. So he’s awakening from two dreams: The fog of his brain and also the fog of his life. And so I told Noah that I thought it was so fun to play.
I got together with Juno to rehearse it and figure out his brain, and we just kind of laughed a lot. So you try to find it intellectually, as the fog of both realities is coming through. And then you find it in your body and ask, “When, in my life, have I been very confused about who I am?” Wayne doesn’t know anything else besides how the people across from him make him feel in those moments. He loves his mom, he loves his wife and he loves his daughter, and his pureness comes through in those scenes. And that’s what he builds on, slowly, throughout the rest of the season.
Well, Noah Hawley clearly likes being in the David Rysdahl business, as he also cast you in his upcoming Alien series. Was this in the works, pre-strike?
Yeah, I went over to Thailand for one day of camera tests, and then things shut down. Noah told me after we wrapped on Fargo. He said, “There might be a role for you on Alien,” and I grew up on both Alien and Fargo. So if you had told me two years ago that I was going to be in either universe, I would’ve thought you were crazy, and the idea that I get to play on both playgrounds makes me feel pretty lucky and grateful. And Noah, in a similar fashion to Fargo, takes the movie and asks, “What’s the DNA of this? What’s the world perspective? What themes are we tackling? What was the original intent of this movie? Let me see if I can play with that in a new way.” So he’s doing a really interesting job of that on Alien, and it’s going to be a very different but very exciting view of what the original movie was.
I thought you gave a really impressive performance in Cathy Yan’s Dead Pigs.
Oh, you watched it! I get really excited whenever someone says they watched it.
Yeah, it’s just a real shame that it sat on a shelf for three years, post-Sundance 2018. Was that a tough pill to swallow given the significance of your role?
Yeah. Cathy Yan is such a talented director, and I wish more people saw that movie. As a society, it seems like we’re now fine with subtitles, so maybe we were too early in 2018. Parasite and Squid Game were when it all changed. As Americans, we’re now down for subtitles, and it’s so great, because it’s opened us up to such great cinema around the world. So I think Dead Pigs, if it came out today, would have fared better, but I think Cathy is one of the best directors we have. I wish that movie came out [in a more substantial way] for her, but she’s doing great. I loved being a part of it, and I think that that movie has a lot to say about the East and West. It’s an interesting movie on its own, so maybe it will find its audience one day. But I love that you’ve seen it. It means a lot to me.
Lastly, we have to discuss the fact that you’re in Oppenheimer, which, for my money, is the movie of the year. What sights and sounds have stuck with you from that experience?
I didn’t sleep at all the night before my first day on set. When I got in the van, all of the cast was inside, and it was cold. But Cillian [Murphy] was right there, and he was like, “Hi, I’m Cillian.” When your lead is that good of a guy and just a down-to-earth mensch, it’s really easy to get behind him. Our job, as scientists, was really mirroring what this movie is. It’s very meta. As actors, we were just there to support this iconic actor’s performance, and that’s exactly what the Manhattan Project was. And then you’re working with Christopher Nolan, and what a brilliant man. It’s intimidating, but he wants you to bring your best self.
On the first day, he was like, “Alright, let’s see the scene.” He wasn’t going to tell you where to stand; he wants you to embody it. And suddenly, I was like, “I’m surrounded by some of the most talented people in the world, but it’s just a movie.” So I had to get the idea out of my head that I’m on Oppenheimer, and just ground myself and do the work and not try to make that one line I had be a line. Just exist. Being present is the biggest challenge as an actor in general. You can get overwhelmed, but then you realize that everyone is just there to make a movie. You’ve done that a thousand times, and you just have to remind yourself that everyone else is there to make a movie. Touch the furniture and say, “This is real, I’m real.” I sometimes do that when I’m in a scene. I’ll just grab a chair to ground myself in the scene, and I had to do that a lot on that set.
But it was a terrific experience to watch some of the greats work and to also realize that they’re in it for the exact same reasons that you are. They want to make something great, and they know it’s bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s bigger than all of us. We were all there in service of this greater thing, which, in a way, is exactly what the scientists were doing back then. All the background actors in the movie were nuclear scientists. They work at the lab in Los Alamos, and when we found that out, it was amazing. We were basically playing the people behind us, and we just asked them all these questions. So I had a small part, but it was a profound set to be on and one that I’ll bring with me to every other set.
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Fargo season five is now airing on FX and Hulu.
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