Fargo's Noah Hawley unpacks tonight's epic fight sequence and teases the rest of season 5

In Fargo’s long-awaited fifth season, Noah Hawley’s acclaimed anthology series boasts a gripping modern crime story, a pretty sensational cast, and, oh yeah, those accents. The 2019-set episodes in latest tale center on Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple), a seemingly simple Minnesota housewife with secrets up her sleeve. She’s been hiding from her abusive ex-husband, Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), for a decade, and she’ll have to defend her family when he comes knocking on her door.

Inspired by the Coen brothers’ 1996 film, the series has plenty of references to that black comedy but boasts its own trademarks as well, with cinematic calling cards, quirky characters and twists, and slow-building suspense. What’s more, Fargo’s narrative about good vs. evil reaches its peak in season five. Take episode four, which aired December 5, wherein Dot is forced to fight to save her loved ones on Halloween night in a thrilling sequence. As always with this show, the momentum is tense—and the payoff is worth it. (Similarly, the cast rules this time, too, featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dave Foley, Richa Moorjani, Lamorne Morris, Joe Keery, Sam Spruell, and David Rysdahl.)

The A.V. Club spoke to Hawley about crafting that intense fourth episode, how Dot and Roy’s history will unspool over season five, which characters just might get a happy ending, and what’s up with his upcoming Alien TV show.

Noah Hawley: I never write with actors in mind. It keeps the characters from becoming specific, like if you already know it’s Jon Hamm as the sheriff versus trying to find [an actor like him] naturally. The process of writing it and making it are completely separate for me. But what a joy it is when the characters are written to then start thinking about actors for them. I’ve been lucky to have had such stellar casts for Fargo, and the power of that recruits the cast for the future. I think people understand that if they’re going to come and do the show, they’re joining the pantheon of some of the best actors of our time.

I get a lot of incoming phone calls. Jennifer Jason Leigh wrote me a lovely letter about the show. And then I’m always on the lookout. I watch a host of international TV shows, and when I see an actor who really pops for me, they go on my list. I saw Sam Spruell in an episode of Small Axe: Mangrove, and he was such a standout. I said, “I want to meet that guy.” Everybody knows Joe Keery as Steve Harrington from Stranger Things. [He really is] in a different form here. I see the potential. A lot of the time, it’s an energy or a vibe, too. I look at Joe and think, He’s got an underlying decency to him. The thing with his character, he plays Roy’s son, Gator, is he acts like a dick, but he’s insecure. When I find an actor who fills the right space, that’s half the battle.

AVC: The whole cast is great, especially Juno Temple, but for me as a South Asian, it’s nice to see Never Have I Ever’s Richa Moorjani in this kind of role. She’s very effective.

NH: She’s so great. Richa joked with me that every Indian American actress in town auditioned for the role of Deputy Indira Olmstead. Those who knew each other were practicing the accents together. It was sweet. She’s such a strong presence. Fargo’s identity is very female in my mind. So through her, Juno Temple, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, I wanted to be able to explore issues that come up in this season of “What is a wife?” and how they each exert power when Roy’s masculine dominance is trying to impose on them. They’re responding with a version of, “Yeah, we’re not doing that.”

AVC: I loved episode four’s Halloween attack fight sequence in Dot’s house. What was it like to figure out that whole scene and what were some its inspirations?

NH: The challenge of it, of course, was the house. We were able to build it for the script. We needed geography that would allow her to get around everything, from the attic to the basement. Everyone uses the Home Alone shorthand, which just means someone who doesn’t have traditional means of defending a home has to defend it from attackers. Dot is a creative problem solver. The fun of it was that these guys came in with scary movie masks and cliched tools like knives and guns. Then they’re faced with this force of chaos. Dot puts the pan of oil in the oven so the smoke alarm sets off; she’s setting the lights off on them. It’s psychological warfare. It’s fun but you also need to feel the threat. You don’t feel the threat in Home Alone because he’s a child, you don’t ever actually want to get scared. But in this situation, I wanted to feel it.

The inspiration for it was that it had to rise cinematically to the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men level of suspense even if it has a rusticness to it. The first thing I did when I was working on the footage was put the Tiny Tim song, his “I Got You, Babe” duet that he’s doing by himself, in there. It’s unsettling. It’s something Dot puts on when they break into the house to disorient them. What I talked about with [episode director] Donald Murphy and the cast was that at the beginning of the sequence, the invaders are the sharks. But there’s a moment when Dot becomes the shark. You have to feel that handoff and realization of, “Oh wait, she’s stalking them now.”

Of course, she’s just one person. She doesn’t have Liam Neeson’s special set of skills. She’s protecting her husband and daughter alone, and they’re both not always listening to her. The attackers are armed. She does lose control. There’s a moment on the roof when she’s out of ideas while the house is on fire and Wayne is unconscious. Then the window shatters and she snaps into action. It was important to me to see that human moment. She’s been so good for so long, but the house is literally destroyed. The life she was trying to protect has ended on some level.

AVC: Fargo is slowly revealing Dorothy and Roy’s mysterious backstory. What can you tease about their past and how it will affect Dot’s current marriage and future?

NH: Marriage is such an intimate relationship. Dot escaped her marriage a decade ago. Roy is clearly controlling and abusive. He’s trying to impose that intimacy back on her. There’s a point later in the season where he says, “Leaving me was a mistake, and so everything that came after is a mistake.” He’s thus negating her husband Wayne (Rysdahl), her daughter Scotty (Sienna King), and the life she’s built. He’s trying to negate her, and she’s desperately fighting for what she’s earned. She probably had a bad childhood and got tricked into feeling safe by Roy when she had no power. She’s not going to allow it anymore though. The thing Roy doesn’t expect other than she’s a tiger is that her mother-in-law, Lorraine (Leigh), is a billionaire who likes to throw her weight around.

AVC: The disparate storylines usually fit like puzzle pieces by the end of every season. Do you write each character’s arc with the conclusion in mind or does that come as you’re building out their journey?

NH: The answer is somewhat both. The ending is what gives the story meaning. You have to know what story you’re telling. I won’t give away the ending for season five, obviously, but I can talk about it in terms of previous seasons. I always describe Fargo as a tragic story with a happy ending. But the first thing I have to decide is who gets the tragic and who gets the happy. In Fargo’s moral scale, each season usually has a character who says they’re the victim, but they’re causing the most damage. They don’t necessarily get the happy ending. There are some rules. It doesn’t mean everyone with a pure heart will survive either. That doesn’t feel realistic.

One of the hardest decisions for me was in season four with Chris Rock’s character. For a man who runs a criminal organization, there’s really no happy ending. But I really didn’t want to put Loy Cannon behind bars because it’s such a symbol of our culture, unfortunately. So for him to have betrayed the two women in his life, and for that to come back to bite him felt believable. It’s the same kind of thing here. We’re yearning for Dot to get back to her family. We want justice. What that means is different for different people. We basically want that moment at the end where Frances McDormand is in bed with her husband at the end, and she’ll wake up, and tomorrow will be a normal day.

AVC: There was a long gap between seasons four and five, partially because of the pandemic. How did having that time impact your writing process?

NH: For me, thematically, Fargo is always about America. What America feels like is shifting dramatically and quickly. So the show I made in 2019 with season four, there’s that America. In 2022, when we made season five, it was different. In four, I was writing about the past. Obviously, this one is more to the present. As a result, it takes time to understand the meaning of the events we are living through, put them in context, and to try and understand the resurgence of the “I’m a strong man, I am the law” and the Warrior Jesus vs. turn-the-other-cheek mindset. Once you have this idea, then the real work begins. I don’t necessarily even know how much time has gone by, that’s the other thing. I’ve had a book, Anthem, come out in the interim. I’ve been working on Alien. I’m just glad Fargo was gone long enough that people missed it.

AVC: Each season has a distinct storyline, timeline, and cast, but feels spiritually connected on some level. What’s the process of approaching it to distinguish it from the last?

NH: Yes. Each season is always differentiated cinematically with a very different look. It started almost accidentally. In season one, the temperature while filming was almost 40 below and the place was blanketed in snow. In our second year, it barely snowed. I liked that you would never look at a still image of those two seasons and confuse them for each other. So we started designing a distinctive look every time. And then the time periods will do it too. They’re all such different stories. What unifies them is tone, location to some degree, and the accents. You don’t see something like CSI: Miami using accents; it’s very distinctive to us. There’s just something about the way we tell the stories. They resonate with people. Within 45 seconds, it’s clear what you’re watching.

AVC: Do you see yourself making more Fargo?

NH: I do. I haven’t exhausted this thing we call Fargo yet. It’s a type of story where the truth is stranger than fiction. It’s a meditation on decent people who are in over their heads, on America, on sins, and on what we do for money. On some level, more than ever, we need to look at the TV and not see some impossible hero but someone who maybe can’t pay the rent and didn’t necessarily sign up to face corruption and cynicism but is too decent to let it go. The great thing about FX is they don’t pressure me. I call them and say, “I’ve got another one,” and they’re happy. Two amazing writers worked with me on the first three seasons of Fargo, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert. They run Apple TV+’s For All Mankind now. I saw them at the premiere, and they were talking about potentially starting season five of their show while I am finishing season five of Fargo. They’ve made their seasons in five years, I’ve made mine in like 10. But I think I like my pacing more.

AVC: I wanted to circle back for a second on your Alien series for FX. Is there an update on where you’re at with it and when it might air?

NH: Well, I’ve got to make it. [Laughs] We had the strike; it interrupted us. I was supposed to finish the first season this year, but now the bulk of it has to be filmed next year. And then we have to do the VFX. Obviously, FX wanted it on the screen yesterday, as anyone would. It’s an iconic franchise. It’ll air as soon as humanly possible.