‘Fargo’ Creator Noah Hawley Talks About Going Back to Basics for Season 5, and Putting Nipple Rings on Jon Hamm

The last time FX's Fargo was on the air, it looked a lot different from the 1996 film from which it draws inspiration. That season, the fourth, more closely resembled a different Coen Brothers classic, Miller’s Crossing, as it used a tale of warring 1950s Black and Italian mobs to unpack grand ideas about the racial exclusion inherent to the “American Dream.” It was often quite interesting, a tad bloated, and—especially in 2020—may have taken on themes too complicated for a darkly comedic crime caper to tackle.

Three years later—and almost 10 years to the date from the show’s 2014 premiere—series creator Noah Hawley is back with a fifth season that takes Fargo back to square one. This is a good thing—I enjoy Hawley’s creative indulgences a bit more than most, but there’s something unbeatable about a tight, streamlined story that isn’t biting off more than it can chew narratively or thematically.

So: we’re back in Minnesota, a midwestern housewife is in danger, selfish and morally corrupt figures loom on the sidelines, and the goodhearted cops who come up against them will have their faith tested. Season five’s Big American Theme is that of debts owed, and at its center is a good ol’ fashioned showdown between stars Juno Temple and Jon Hamm. She’s Dorothy “Dot” Lyon, a seemingly mousy housewife who’s actually been on the run for a decade from his Sherriff Roy Tillman, until circumstances put her back in his crosshairs and he forcefully reenters her life to collect. In the midst there’s Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dot’s mother-in-law, a debt-collection magnate who stages the family Christmas card with assault rifles and everyone from Lamorne Morris (as you guessed it, the Nice Cop) to Joe Keery rounding out another colorfully stacked cast.

But it’s hard to focus on anyone other than Hamm, showing us a new trick in his actorly arsenal as one of the most imposing and reprehensible characters he’s played yet. One of the most hedonistic, too, as viewers saw in one of his character’s big debut scenes, in which Roy proudly flashes his nipple rings at two FBI agents sniffing around his compound as he basks in a hot tub, a big freaky fish in a small pond.

Fargo season five officially kicked off last week on FX and Hulu with a two-episode premiere. Ahead of its start, I asked Hawley about getting one of TV’s most prestigious actors to sport those eye-catching piercings, setting Fargo closer to the present than ever before with this year’s 2019 timeline, how he feels about season four now, and that Alien series he’s been teasing for years now.

The last time we talked in 2020, you were open about already kicking some ideas around for season five. When did this story really take shape for you?

Well, what happened is that I got into this Alien pipeline of development to try to hit a certain date, and then things started to move around and I realized that I couldn't shoot Alien until '23. And I thought, I think I can fit a Fargo in in '22. Maybe I should just put my feet up and not work that much more, but I love making the show.

And so, it was a pretty fast process from saying I want to do it and really figuring out the idea to making it. It was probably February of last year that I was like, "Let's do it," and then [we had] writers in a room in March, April, and then we're shooting in October, November.

But it was exciting to go back to the movie after four years for the first time to really say, Well, let's look at the movie and let's riff on it, and do what I call a game of telephone with the movie, which is if you give two writers the assignment to write movies about a man who kidnaps his wife, this season is a different writers' version of the same story.

It definitely does feel more like a… I don't want to say return, but I think season three and definitely four expanded to broader, more loosely connected ideas. Whereas this new season feels more in line with both the themes and feel of the first two seasons and the film that you're still drawing inspiration from.

Yeah, it's such a flexible concept, this Fargo thing. As I said, when I first pitched the series to FX, "Why is the movie called Fargo? It's set in Minnesota." Except that Fargo is a type of story, it's a place, what Joel and Ethan called Siberia with family restaurants. But after the movie Fargo, it's also a type of story, where truth is stranger than fiction.

And so, that idea that Fargo doesn't really refer to a literal story, but more a kind of state of mind, a tone of voice… I've really been trying to push those boundaries. It can be a literal one-to-one, where the car salesman is an insurance salesman, but can it be a 1979 crime epic? Or can it be a modern Faustian tale, two feuding brothers? Or can it be an American crime epic set in 1950 about the war between people who can't get into the mainstream economy? And then this year, yeah, there was a deliberate desire to tell a tight, propulsive story that handled big ideas, but did it on the move.

Was that in direct response to some of the critiques of season four, or just a reflex to do something different after making four? I've noticed the episodes so far are all a tight, TV-standard 43-ish minutes, where a common complaint about season four was that the episodes went over an hour.

No, it wasn't really in response to that. It's amazing what can change in three years in the culture, in my own habits as a viewer, and how much story I want when I watch something now. We had this amazing blossoming of what television could be that involved a lot of experimentation, a lot of boundary-pushing, longer episodes, more storylines, surrealism, all the stuff that I played with between 2017 and 2021. And I just really wanted to get back to a great story well-told.

And certainly, we're in a world where people will be on one to three devices at the same time, and I feel like if you can really hold people's attention, they'll pay attention. I wanted to hook them from the very beginning and then before they know it, the episode's over and they've been on a great ride.

That's definitely how I felt watching the end of the third episode especially.

Yes! I think that's exciting, and you do leave people wanting more. This season has a lot of action in it. There's a lot of confrontation, but there's a lot of humor as well. We're on this collision course between Juno and Jon, but how we get there and when and what's going to happen, we don't know.

You’ve often talked about the show as unpacking this grand idea about America and these different sub-ideas within that. The past seasons dealt with the death of the family business, the billionaire class stuff, and as you described Season Four, "the original sin of America." Thinking about those themes going into 5, it felt very pointed that the Jennifer Jason Leigh character has made her fortune off of debt. What are you trying to say across this season, about America this time?

For me, the show is always rooted in that line: “And here you are and it's a beautiful day and for what, a little bit of money?” This idea of how Americans are compromised morally by either the money they have or the money that they need—some two-thirds of Americans have a not-insignificant amount of debt that they're struggling under.

And it would be one thing if it was just a loan they had to pay back, but it comes with this moral judgment as well. You have a class of people who either have no debt or they use debt to their advantage at the top, and then a class of people who are struggling to repay debts. If they can't repay, then they're judged to be criminal or immoral or whatever.

And then of course, there's the other sense of debt, which is the debts that we owe to each other and the promises we've made that we're expected to keep. And well, what if that promise was to honor and obey a husband who beats you? Do you still have to keep that promise? Can you run away? What if the promise is to honor and obey a mother who's domineering? If she doesn't seem to love you, do you have to love her back?

All those ideas of debt and the things that we owe, and they're all really tied into the idea of forgiveness, which you'll see will play a big part in this season as well.

The other big theme running concurrent is that simmering, post-Trump-victory, take-the-country-back right-wing rage. Why did you want to tap into that specific strain of current events?

I don't have a desire for the show to be political or to really engage politically with the audience as much as to look at society. The difference really comes down to selfishness versus selflessness. The more selfish you are, the worse a person you are.

And those people who are generous think of others and try to make the world a better place, that's the other way of being. And on some level, the heart of Fargo is the battle between those forces. There's often a moment in Fargo where the worst person in the show says, "I'm the victim here." And with Roy Tillman, obviously there's some echoes to some right-wing characters that we don't have to name, but he's a guy who says, "I am the law." And what he means is, "If I do it, it's not a crime, but everything you do is a crime."

That mindset, which is unfortunately prevailing and really warping the American conversation right now, I just wanted to take it out of real life and put it into this allegory and engage with it. Follow that to its logical conclusion. You'll see in the fifth hour—Jennifer Jason Leigh sits down with Jon Hamm and they have this conversation and she's like, "So you want freedom with no responsibility?" I won't spoil it for you, but ultimately that's the idea: I don't want to have to owe anyone anything or be answerable to anyone, but I do want to be able to tell other people what to do.

How did you decide on Jon Hamm for Roy? I don't think we've ever seen him so outwardly villainous.

Well, he was great in Baby Driver as a much slicker [villain] with a sort of shark smile. That movie had a little bit more of—I won't say a cartoonish layer, but he was an archetype in that. And on some level, he's the American sheriff here. He is also an archetype.

But Jon is a quintessentially American actor. He's from St. Louis. He's a Midwestern guy. He bulked up for this role. [Roy] carries this sort of thuggishness around with him, even as he's very smart. But his view of the world is so warped by a kind of entitlement narrative and a sense that the world has to work according to his dictates. An amazing thing about Mad Men is how many seasons we watched about a guy who really wasn't a good guy. And yet, we were fascinated by him and we followed him. One of the great things about Jon is that he can play both sides of that moral spectrum.

The nipple piercing reveal really threw me for a loop.

[laughs] Well, that's the other aspect of it—that we don't live in a Jerry Falwell, moral majority America anymore. We live in Tiger King America. Just as turn-the-other-cheek Jesus became warrior Jesus, there's this weird hedonism that feels like it's now part of this Trumpian-right base that, on some level, makes him much more interesting and complex.

You're going to assume that if he's a sheriff, he's this uptight guy who's maybe guilty of some hypocrisy. But in his mind, there's no contradiction between standing at the pulpit on a Sunday and preaching about the Lord and having a sex trunk in his bedroom and a wife who says, "What do you want today, Daddy? Angry, Frightened Hitchhiker or Angry Feminist?"

Did you make Jon commit and get some real piercings, or are those just props?

I'd like to say that I did, but no. It's a process that involves a little silicon and some plaster and a little bit of glue.

You mentioned earlier that amidst all these weighty themes, this season emphasizes the fun too. To that end, two reference points that I wasn't really expecting were Home Alone and Nightmare Before Christmas.

Right. Yes, definitely, when you watch Fargo this year, you're going to get a lot more Nightmare Before Christmas than you ever would've imagined.

And certainly, Home Alone is inescapable and a sort of shorthand for anyone who is trying to defend their home with spit and bubble gum. For me, what makes Dot compelling is how much people underestimate her, and her strength is really that she's just a creative problem solver. Where you see a bag of ice, she sees both a slipping hazard and a weapon. And her mind moves very quickly and she's going to defend her home. And if they won't sell her guns, well, she's going to drag that sledgehammer up from the basement and hang it over the front door.

There’s also an overall foreboding mood—there’s this moment in episode three when Roy is staring at a ceiling thinking of Dot and there’s a dissolve to her that felt almost Hitchcockian.

What I love about sequences like that is that they're cinematic. It's not about what's said. These aren't dialogue sequences. What we want to know is that he tried to kidnap Dot and he failed and he can't get her out of his head. Clearly, he's obsessed and he's trying to figure out how to get her back. But [that scene] also shines a light on what the dynamic of his current marriage is. It felt like in that sequence, where very little is said, you get to see all those things and in a way that creates tension.

What was fun about shooting those things that day is basically, we shot both sides of that moment on the same day, where we shot Jon in the bedroom and he's looking up at the ceiling and he's smoking pot, as most constitutional sheriffs are wont to do. He exhales the smoke and the smoke goes up toward the ceiling where we have projected an image of Dot in her home and he says, "I see you."

And then the B side of the cut is Juno in the living room of her home. I went over to that set and at the start of the shot of Juno, we exhaled smoke in front of the camera.

And so, even though those actors are in two completely different places, cinematically, it's like he reaches out to her. He invades her space, he invades her head. She turns around, she can feel him there, thinking of her.

Those are the kinds of spontaneous production moments that are always really exciting. It's not literal and you can't logic-police it. It gives you that feeling, that creepy feeling.

You maintain that creepy feeling throughout the rest of the episode, especially with the Ole Munch character who, with the backstory you reveal, feels of a piece with past seasons’ embrace the fantastical, be it ghosts or UFOs.

I refer to them as these elemental characters, which I feel exist in Joel and Ethan's movies, whether it's Anton Chigurh or the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. Or in my case, [Billy Bob Thornton’s] Lorne Malvo or V. M. Varga. These characters, these sort of creepy, cynical forces of corruption that you feel like have always been blowing through the American landscape. And whether it's Billy Bob himself who will show up in your town in 1721 or 1850 or 1975, or it's Billy with a different face, there's something about that character that is out there.

And in this case with Ole, as the audience will see, there is a sort of very thematic concept of debt that is explored through his character and debts that he takes on.

Without giving anything away too overtly, can we expect, as past seasons have, a kind of referential callback to one or all of the past seasons?

It's never a huge deal to me to build those Easter eggs into it. If I can find an authentic and natural way to do it, I will. It's not like in the first season, where they find the money from the film. Or how at the end of season four, you realize that Chris Rock's son grows up to be Bokeem Woodbine [‘s character in season 2]. This has a more standalone quality to it, but it's also more evocative of the film, so it does parallel it in a way that feels just as meaningful.

Do you feel like season four is underrated a little bit?

Look, I love that season. That season, in some ways, is the culmination of my work as a storyteller and a filmmaker, and it's certainly the biggest story that I've told. It has 23 main characters, but I think it's just as compelling and immersive as any of the smaller seasons.

Yes, I think that in the long run, that season, those 10-11 hours of film will go down as some of my best work. I believe that. Does that mean that in September through January of 2020, 2021, that it's what America wanted to watch?

The show was supposed to premiere in April of that year, but we got shut down by the pandemic, and it was six months before we could go back. There was a real reckoning with race and class in America, and if it had aired in April, it would've come at the beginning of a trend. Because after that, there were many. Lovecraft County. I think Watchmen had come out before that. There were a number of shows and films that addressed the issue, but instead of being at the beginning of that trend, we were at the end of that trend. And so, the appetite for wrestling with that and being entertained by those characters in that question—I think we ran into some fatigue.

Speaking of the events in 2020, the show is both geographically and chronologically coming up to George Floyd. With some of the other right-wing stuff that's hovering in the season, was there part of you that thought about incorporating that or sowing the seeds for it a little bit?

No, I don't think so. I think that you have to respect the power of these moments in our history, and if you're going to address them, you can't just toss them into things.

I think Scorsese referred to, and used, the Tulsa Massacre in Killers of the Flower Moon as a way to contextualize what was happening to the Osage people. It was relevant to that story. And we weren't telling a story like that. But certainly, if you look at the way that Jon Hamm and Joe Keery's characters treat Lamorne Morris's character, the sort of overt racism in that violence, both implied and real, it's implied. If that makes sense.

Yeah, it does. I can’t leave you without getting an Alien update first.

What I'll say is, that feeling that I got in Fargo this year—having recreated a version of the living room from the movie and recreating certain shots that really echo the kidnapping from the movie and therefore being on set and feeling like I was standing in the movie—I had that same sort of hair-raising feeling on Alien on the month that I was able to shoot it standing in a space where I thought, "I'm in the movie. I'm in the movie Alien, and time and space collapsed between 1978 and 2023."

It's really thrilling. There are three science fiction icons—there's Star Wars, Star Trek, and Alien, and you would never mistake one for the other visually. And to be able to stand on that dripping set, it's really so exciting and I'm excited to get back and finish it so people can watch.

Originally Appeared on GQ