Oh gosh, “Fargo” exec producers Noah Hawley and Warren Littlefield weren’t shy about sharing details about for the FX miniseries’ recently announced second season.
Hawley, who is credited for writing all the episodes of the first season but will be delegating some of those duties for season two, said that they will mess with timelines and locations for sophomore year.
“If you were paying attention in season one, you know we made a lot of references to Sioux Falls and that was deliberate; that wasn’t an accident,” he said. “So, what this next 10-hour movie is going to be is the story of Sioux Falls. The movie will take place in 1979 … with the story set mostly in Luverne, Minnesota, in Fargo and, of course, in Sioux Falls as well.”
He added that the show will follow a young Lou Solverson (played by Keith Carradine in season one), who is 33 and has just returned from the Vietnam conflict. The show will also introduce Solverson’s wife, who was not a character in the first season, and her father. Sadly, Hawley said he would not be able cast Allison Tolman — who played Bemidji police officer Molly Solverson (and Carradine’s daughter) — in the new season.
“I spoke to Allison Tolman this morning and told her that unless she could channel her four-year-old self, we weren’t going to be able to have her in season two, which is a crime and a tragedy and you should all be very angry at us for doing that,” he said. “I would like nothing more than to see the continuing adventures of Molly and [Colin Hanks’] Gus, but it felt like it would just be disingenuous in the service of truthiness to give them another Coen brothers case.”
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Last season’s buzz certainly benefitted from casting marquee names like Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman, but Littlefield said star power wasn’t necessary this year.
“Getting Billy Bob to sign on to play Lorne Malvo gave us a credibility that we really deserved to play in a Coen world,” he said, but “one of the great things about television is that you get to make stars [like Tolman] … I think a lot of people are going to want to play in the ‘Fargo’ sandbox in season two and we’ll look at the best possible talent that can play the characters that Noah comes up with. They might be household names, but we’re in a world where anyone, any level — Academy Award winners — are opting in for television and we only ask for a 10-hour commitment.”
Hawley said that the writers are just beginning to break the season two episodes, but said that “if the three [Coen] movies that influenced season one were ‘Fargo,’ ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘A Serious Man,’ then this year we are in ‘Fargo,’ ‘Miller’s Crossing’ and ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There.’ Let the Internet speculation begin.”
Season two of “Fargo” begins filming in January in Calgary. While there is no airdate yet, FX is aiming for a premiere in late 2015.