Minnesota-nice and nasty: Your guide to the actors and characters of Fargo Year 5

Article content

Noah Hawley’s Calgary-shot anthology series Fargo returns to the airwaves this week on FX. Inspired by the 1996 Coen brothers’ darkly comic movie of the same name, the series has a new storyline and cast this year. As always, it’s an impressive bunch that includes award-winning stars such as Juno Temple, Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh, character actors such as Britain’s Sam Spruell and actors such as David Foley and Larmone Morris, who are better known for their comedic roles. Postmedia visited the set in March and interviewed most of the cast. Here is a guide to the new faces you will see this season.

Article content

Article content

Juno Temple as Dorothy (Dot) Lyon

Where have you seen her before?: Ted Lasso, Maleficent, Vinyl

Character: The protagonist of the series this year, Dorothy (Dot) Lyon seems on the surface to be a typical, Minnesota-nice wife of Wayne, a devoted mother of daughter Scotty and a PTA member. But when she suddenly appears on the radar of Sheriff Roy Tillman, her past comes back to haunt her and Dot proves she is not what she seems. Resourceful, resilient and determined to not let her family fall into the world she once escaped, Dot shows a surprising talent for dispatching the bad guys when they threaten her new life.

“Dot is the connective tissue to all of these other extraordinary storylines and they all meet because of her,” Temple says. “Although technically I’m the lead in the show, it feels so like an ensemble piece and that’s why I was drawn to it. I so love working with people, with actors and getting to develop storylines with different pathways entirely and how that will affect your character.”

Jon Hamm as Sheriff Roy Tillman

Where have you seen him before?: Mad Men, Top Gun: Maverick, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Article content

Article content

Character: Jon Hamm makes no bones about it, he sees the violent Bible-thumping Sheriff Roy Tillman as a villain. He’s the sheriff of a small community and a “preacher of his church, which is on his property,” Hamm told Postmedia earlier this year. Like most villains, Tillman doesn’t believe he’s a villain. He believes he is doing God’s work as he tracks down Dot Lyon in an attempt to take back what he thinks he owns.

“I think it has a timeless quality to it: sort of a proto-Malboro Man western mystique,” Hamm says.  “There’s a lot of that imagery which you’ll see in the show, the rugged cowboy on his own, living off that land sort of thing, which we romanticize in our culture but I think has a very dark underbelly as well. Which is why he is such a fun character to play and I think will be a tremendously fun character to watch.”

Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lorraine Lyon

Where have you seen her before?: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Hateful Eight

Character: The ruthless CEO of the biggest debt collection agency in America, Lorraine Lyon wields significant power and has little patience for those who stand in her way. Her relationship with her seemingly weak-willed son Wayne and his mysterious wife Dot is something she believes she can control like everything else in her life. But with Dot, she may have bit off more than she can chew.

Article content

Joe Keery as Gator Tillman

Where have you seen him before?: Stranger Things, Free Guy, No Activity

Character: One of his father’s deputies, Gator, thinks of himself as Sheriff Roy Tillman’s right-hand man. On the surface, Gator is not lacking in confidence but he is also desperate to win the approval of his father, who tends to see him as a disappointment. He is dangerous but inept.

“The relationship with (Roy) is really the jumping-off point for me for the entire show,” Keery says. “It informs how this guy moves through the world and deals with certain situations. In terms of how the characters interact, that was a real interesting dynamic to play because it’s so charged and so one-way and it’s completely out of whack. If you think about it as a circuit, I’m getting so much and he is maybe not. It’s a guy trying to please his father and do whatever he can to do it.” 

Dave Foley as Danish Graves

Where have you seen him before?: Kids in the Hall, NewsRadio, Brain Candy

Character: The eye-patch-wearing Danish Graves is Lorraine Lyon’s in-house counsel and advisor, a somewhat arrogant but effective lawyer who helps his boss put out fires and is enlisted to “help” Dot when she appears to be in a world of trouble.

Article content

“He is a guy who has always had the power of his position and mistakenly thought that he actually had power,” Foley says. “He sees himself as being the bite to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character Lorraine. His job is to be the bite to her bark. He mostly just admires her ruthlessness and wishes to be as cruel as she is but can’t quite pull it off.”

Sam Spruell as Ole Munch

Where have you seen him before?: Dr. Who: Flux, Snow White and the Huntsman, Taken 3

Character: Creator Noah Hawley has created several strange characters with murky origin stories to populate the Fargo universe over the years, but Ole Munch may be the weirdest yet. His age and birthplace are unknown and “some say he has always been here, blowing through the American landscape.” Sheriff Tillman and his hapless son Gator do learn early on that Ole Munch is dangerous and not to be crossed.

“You hear that description and you think, ‘Well, how the (expletive) am I going to embody any of that? How am I going to make that a person,” Spruell says. “I can understand it conceptually fine, but what does that do to a person? What does living for 400 years, or however long it is, do to a person? Does it make you excited to get up every day? Probably not. You’re probably sick of waking up.”