Inside the Oversized Ambition of ‘Fargo’ Year 5: Movie Connections, Tiger King Inspirations, And Another Rogue Weirdo

Fargo isn’t an easy show to make — not that you’d be able to tell from looking at it. Even though the temperature range on its Calgary set has spanned 135 degrees, executive producer Warren Littlefield recalls production only shutting down due to weather once. In Year 1, the show was trying to film a scene that involved a nearly naked man running through the snow on the coldest day Calgary has seen in 20 years: minus 37 Fahrenheit without accounting for windchill. It wasn’t until a traffic cone shattered from the cold that production finally threw in the towel. 

Over the series’ nearly 10 years of existence, Fargo has worked through shocking restraints. It’s a show so ambitious and complicated you would assume it requires years to film a single installment instead of six months, and multi-millions to cover its top-tier talent and expert directorial work instead of a fairly average budget. When you account for all of this, the creation of a single episode of a show that’s stood toe-to-toe against some of the TV’s heaviest hitters is miraculous. And yet when you walk on the set of Fargo Year 5, all of these impossibilities feel effortless.

“The metaphor I use is: OK, we’re going to walk right up to the edge of the cliff and hang our toes over it. We’re just not going to fall in,” executive producer Kim Todd told a group of reporters that included Decider. “We’re going to go to the edge of our ability, the edge of our resources — the time and money we’ve got — to execute these scripts. Every member of the crew bought into that. And if they didn’t, they didn’t last beyond the first two episodes.”

For all of its intensity, it’s a strategy that’s worked. Executive producer Steve Stark estimated that of the roughly 250 crew members currently working on this installment, 94 of them have been with the series since the beginning. The limited series has won eight Emmys and is consistently part of awards conversations and “best of” lists. But it’s difficult to fully appreciate the talent of these actors and crew members unless you see them in action. While on a set visit for Year 5, Decider witnessed Juno Temple and David Rysdahl filming a tense conversation about grocery shopping. One second, the scene was no different than any heated moment you may expect on any prestige TV show. Minutes later, a spell had been cast and the same scene was nearly unrecognizable. A few barely explained notes and some camera alterations transformed a forgettable moment into one that could only belong on Fargo; something that was simultaneously terrifying, infuriatingly passive, fragile, and still darkly funny. 

In that way, the culture of Fargo is as distinct as the show itself. It’s a place where the costume department will work tirelessly for weeks to believably wear down one of Jon Hamm’s coats and where directors give crew members customized cookies, referencing on-set in-jokes. It’s a set that places a dizzying amount of effort into finding the perfect, vaguely upsetting wallpaper to channel the inner turmoil of Juno Temple’s character yet whips up its gore from dyed bananas and bread found from the craft services table. Welcome to the chaotic world of Fargo Year 5 and one of the most impressive productions on television.

• Year 5 will be the most direct adaptation of the movie to date and will question what it means to be a wife. 

  Ever since Year 1, Fargo has stood as an homage to the Coen brothers’ work. But this will be the first installment that directly mirrors the 1996 movie. “For me, this year was about revisiting the film in a more reflective or literal way with this idea of the wife who was kidnapped by her husband, just not the husband that she’s married to right now,” showrunner and executive producer Noah Hawley explained. “In the film, Bill Macy was the hero. I mean, he was the central guy with a moral dilemma about was he going to be good or was he going to be bad… And at the center of it was the story of the wife — the woman who didn’t really have a voice in the story. So for me this year is exploring the story from her side and also exploring this idea of ‘wifeness.’”

  Primarily through Juno Temple’s character Dot Lyon, this installment will question what it means to be a wife. What does a wife truly owe her partner? And how does that reflect our modern views of masculinity and femininity? The severity of these questions will test both Dot’s limits and Temple’s dramatic chops.

  To prepare for the role, Temple rewatched Fargo weekly. “[Dot] left behind her past because it was not a kind one. It wasn’t one that was what she’d always dreamed up and what she’d been looking for,” Temple said. Yet when confronted with the monsters of her past, Dot will be forced to do anything possible to protect her family. “She does not want her family to bear the burden of her past. She is doing everything in her power to protect them without bringing them into it.” 

• Another major theme this season? Debt.

  What it means to be a wife isn’t the only major theme of this installment. Year 5 will also explore debt, financial and otherwise. Some characters become wrapped in the crime saga partially because of their monetary problems, like Richa Moorjani’s Indira Olmstead, a devoted cop who’s married to a gambling addict. On the other side of this monetary equation, there’s Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Lorraine Lyon, the cutthroat CEO of the largest debt collection agency in the country with the nickname “the Queen of Debt.” But this year will also explore the concept on a broader level. 

  “[There’s] also the moral concept of debt and the things that we owe each other,” Hawley said. “What does Juno owe to her first husband, to whom she said all those vows and he wants to hold her to them? And what debt does Jennifer Jason Leigh as a mother owe to her son?”

• Jon Hamm will play a sheriff and preacher inspired by the Tiger King. 

  No show loves to subvert expectations quite like Fargo. This is the series that made Chris Rock its dramatic acting lead and tested Ewan McGregor’s funnier side by giving him two slimy characters to play at once. Now Jon Hamm is on the chopping block in a role that will test how much you can love this fan-favorite actor. 

  Hamm plays Roy Tillman, a constitutional sheriff, rancher, preacher, distant father, and devoted defender of the American gospel who believes he’s above the law. “Noah pitched this character to me as Sheriff Joe Arpaio mixed with the Tiger King,” Hamm said. “There’s several examples of those guys throughout the country, unfortunately, who think that, not only the law doesn’t apply, but they make the law. So it applies to other people, but not them. They exist outside of it extra-judicially or something… You can see it in the Proud Boys, you can see it in the Boogaloos, and all the other bullshit militias that are these Looney Tunes cosplaying as wannabe soldiers.

  “I really don’t know where that comes from. I can probably write a book about it. Because you can kind of see what it really is, this kind of angry, white, privileged thing that ‘we’ve lost the control.’ It’s like, everything’s fine. Calm down. You don’t need to go play soldier and shoot up the Capitol or declare yourself your own country,” Hamm added.

  Though Hamm understands that Mad Men’s Don Draper became a lovable antihero to many, he sees Roy Tillman as more of a cautionary tale. “I play a rough character, a pretty bad guy. And yet, there’s hopefully some — I don’t want to say laughs But there’s some moments of humor in there that kind of make the needle skip a little sometimes. Otherwise, it’s just mustache twisting,” Hamm said. 

• Jon Hamm has a surprising personal connection to Fargo’s world of crime.

  Between Hamm’s love of Fargo, his past with Noah Hawley, and his fascination with what he refers to as the narcissism and danger of over-celebrating the “rugged individual man of the land,” it’s no wonder why the star signed on for Year 5. But Hamm has another reason to be interested in the criminal underworld of the Midwest: his family.

  “When most people think of organized crime, they think of The Sopranos and the mafia,” Hamm said. “This is a different version of that. And it’s interesting, especially for me, given my family for multiple generations was in the interstate trucking business, based out of St. Louis, not too far down the road from Fargo. My grandfather and my great-grandfather dealt with quite a few of the unsavory elements that were involved in interstate trucking — the Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters, things like that. And so it’s an interesting world that we have to live in.”

• This chapter will question law enforcement like Fargo never has before.

  Fargo has always reveled in the gray areas of humanity. While incompetent police officers and detectives have been a mainstay of this universe since the Coen brothers’ movie, Hamm’s character in Year 5 will mark the first time a member of law enforcement is actually a villain in this series. But as nefarious as Roy Tillman may be, there are still heroes in this snow-coated world. 

  “Every season and the movie, Fargo always has a character that represents the moral center of the stories, who’s a good person, a nice person trying to do good in a chaotic world. That is, I would say, Indira and Witt Farr [Lamorne Morris], the other cop in the series,” Moorjani exclusively told Decider. To prepare for the role, Moorjani met with Allison Tolman, who starred in Year 1 of the series, and went on a ride along with Calgary officers. But despite the many law-abiding heroes that have come before her, Indira isn’t a clone of anyone. She belongs to Moorjani.

  “She’s the first female cop of color, the first South Asian cop, who’s one of the lead characters. I knew inherently that as much as I could take from the other performances, she was going to be her own character,” Moorjani said. “Something that’s so interesting to me that I constantly, even still, think about is why do people of color become cops if the system not really designed for them? That’s something I really wanted to explore and learn more about.”

• Sam Spruell will play another one of Fargo’s larger-than-human beings.

  The Coen brothers’ worlds have always been defined by three forces: the good, the evil, and the other. That third force has appeared in Fargo as Year 1’s Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) and Year 3’s V. M. Varga (David Thewlis), looming monsters that seem to elude death and transcend the human experience. Now Year 5 will add another one of these characters to the series’ roster in the form of Sam Spruell’s Ole Munch, a mysterious man who’s hired by Roy Tillman. 

  “I liked that idea, as we sort of look at America and the expanse of America, that some of these figures, like V.M. Varga, they’re always out there. Whether literally or metaphysically, they’re always out there. And Lorne Malvo, I saw him as blowing through the American landscape, sort of timelessly. I find that tone of voice is available to me in [the Coen brothers’] work because it allows for these true stories that aren’t true. They’re fables, in a way,” Hawley said. “Sam’s character was kind of born of debt. There used to be, in olden times, sin-eating, where a rich man would pay a poor man, after he died, to consume food off his body and thus take on his sins so that the rich man could go to heaven. That idea of selling your soul for a couple of coins it’s definitely part of Sam’s origin story.”

  Despite the fact his character will stand among Fargo’s growing list of complicated, violent, and nearly otherworldly figures, Spruell doesn’t see Ole Munch as a villain. “I feel like he has no horizon above living in sin. I feel like he’s just stuck in that mindset. That sinful world is where he exists,” Spruell told Decider. “No one has told him he can exist somewhere differently, and so he can’t imagine. I think he’s a very tragic figure.”

• Though this is the most recent chapter of the series, don’t expect a lot of smartphones.

  Set in 2019, Year 5 will mark the most recent installment of the series to date. That setting was chosen very specifically. Hawley wanted to address the struggles modern Americans are having today without focusing on COVID-19. 

  “This whole movie that Joel and Ethan [Coen] made was based on the idea of ‘Minnesota nice’ and what happens in polite society when people can’t say out loud what they really want or need. But what happens when people stop being nice to each other?” Hawley said. “Look at the school board meetings, even in Minnesota, where there’s fighting. They’re screaming. No one seems to be passive-aggressive anymore. You know what I mean? It’s all out in the open. So part of the season is also about how do we get back to decency and compassion. I always defined Fargo as the people we yearn to be, who are decent and loyal, versus the people we fear the most, who are cynical and violent.”

  But even in the era of smartphones, don’t expect technology and social media to dominate this installment. Rather, this story will be inspired by our digital age rather than defined by it. “There’s a line that Sam Spruell talks about later in the season, about when he was younger freedom was you didn’t get killed that day. You didn’t want because only kings could want. But now everywhere you look, you see kings. And they think what they want is their right, basically,” Hawley explained. “There are certainly some of those modern ideas that are agitated by social media and the constant 24 [hour] ‘refresh, refresh, refresh, outrage gets attention’ kind of thing that are part of the of the story, but not referred to specifically within the story.”

• Fargo may not end with Year 5, but don’t expect a big interconnecting season.

  Hawley and FX have maintained the same line when it comes to Fargo’s future. As long as Hawley has an idea for another season, the network is happy to keep renewing the series. “There are long periods of time when I finished one, where I go, ‘Well, that’s that’s probably it. I don’t have another idea.’ And then you wake up one morning, like, ‘Oh, yeah, I could do that,’” Hawley said.

  But even though the showrunner is uncertain whether this installment will be the end of his crime series, he’s sure there will never be a big interconnecting season simply for the sake of unifying these stories. “We had this conceit, introduced in the second season, about the big book of true crime, Midwestern true crime,” Hawley said [Editor’s note: That fictional book is titled The History of True Crime in the Midwest]. “We don’t really revisit that object this year, but there is the sense that all these stories are part of some larger exploration. Sometimes characters will move between seasons or they’ll find the money from the movie in the first season, but it’s not a rule. Only if it fits naturally and organically and adds to the story then I’m all for it. But I’m not looking for Easter eggs to tease people.”

Fargo Year 5 premieres Tuesday, November 21 at 10 pm ET/PT on FX, and streaming the next day on Hulu.