Steven Prusakowski
Season one of FX’s Fargo delivered an amazing cast including the Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman and Allison Tolman that set the trajectory for the acclaimed series that has garnered 55 Emmy nominations and six wins (so far). The next season to follow possessed another impeccable cast, and the next, and the next. This is not a coincidence, besides show runner Noah Hawley, there’s another key part of the Fargo puzzle in casting director Rachel Tenner.
Tenner has been on board with Fargo since the Coen Brother’s feature film and every season since. She sat down with Awards Radar to break down some of the decisions when casting season 5, her process, the spinoff she’d like to see and more.
Awards Radar: Hello Rachel. Let me start by saying season five is just an incredible – where it starts and where it finishes, and the emotional roller coaster and the kind of enlightening closure of it is some of the best writing and acting I’ve just seen in years. I’m so surprised by what they were able to accomplish.
Rachel Tenner: It’s kind of amazing Noah (Hawley) can do that. Every season, just kind of come up with a whole new story, concept, keep the continuity tonally, you know what I mean? But just create all new worlds, and then still in the fifth season, still have it be something really meaningful and memorable.
Awards Radar: With some series, it is one season and then by the next season they don’t have anything left to say. And with Fargo, not only does it have something to say it’s something brand new, it still has its roots connected to previous seasons and tying it in together, it’s clever in that way as well. And it’s never just a carbon copy in any way, shape, or form, which makes you step in each season almost as if it’s a new show.
Rachel Tenner: I know a lot of people who watched season five for the first time, had never watched Fargo, and watched season five for the first time, and now have gone back to start watching the other seasons. You really can do that. You can go five, to three, to one, to two, however you want to do it.
Awards Radar: Yeah. I have some friends like that as well. I kept recommending it and said, well, we’re just going to start with five and see if you like it. I’m like, ‘It’s not going to spoil anything.’ So… how did you get involved with the series?
Rachel Tenner: You know, it’s funny, I was talking to Max Kisbye, who’s over at MGM Amazon, but we were just talking about how this started in 2012 or 13, it was12 years ago. And I had been working for Ellen Chenoweth for a long time and had worked on Joel and Nathan’s (Coen) projects for a number of years as her associate. I had gone on my own and this show came up.
And so I think in some ways I had the opportunity because I had been part of that world before and felt I could speak Coen Brother and understand totally what we would be trying to achieve and the kind of fun and humor and darkness that exists in most of their stuff. And what I feel is I feel exists in the series as well. So I interviewed, I sat down with Warren Littlefield and Noah Hawley and I interviewed for it and got it and got to start that first season. But it’s been a long time, something 12 years.
Awards Radar: Five great seasons. It’s great to be latched onto something that’s so beloved and successful as well.
Rachel Tenner: And it’s spaced out so nicely it’s not so, not everything is really rushed around it. You know, I don’t think that Noah brings it to fruition until he really has the concept and has the whole thing to flush out. So when an idea is there and a season is there, then we make it. Now granted, I’m not in the studio, so that could be totally wrong. It could be a lot more specific than that. But from the casting director point of view, it does seem it’s allowed to kind of just when, when it’s really flushed out, that’s when we get to make another one, which is a real blessing.
Awards Radar: It has time to breathe.
Rachel Tenner: Yeah, totally.
Awards Radar: Can you explain your role a little bit and when you get involved in the process?
Rachel Tenner: I get pulled in pretty early. I feel that I’ve been lucky on this show that there’s a generous period of time to get to work on it and sit with the scripts and do lists and work on ideas and get to sit down with Noah and discuss all of it. So it’s not rushed.
It’s not like where you have 10 weeks go it’s usually a lot and we have a little bit more space around it. So I’ll get the scripts or as many that are available. And then I read them, I break them down and establish who are going to be the series regulars and who are the most important. I will generally work on my own ideas before I talk to Noah. I mean, look, sometimes it’s different for a season. If I have questions about some of the roles, maybe I’ll try to flush it out more. It’s a mix really.
We’ll talk about the characters a little bit more. I think while I’m reading, I’ll start writing the ideas that occurred to me. But then once we discuss, then I’ll flush out my list more and then kind of hone it in a little bit about what we’re talking about.
So then we’ll sit down and start going over ideas and talk about who we like and why and who’s and how they work in the Coen space. And how many names you have per character on that list? Sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll do when in my own personal process, I do my I call it my vomit list. So my vomit list is just anything that sticks out to me, any name or idea.
I’ll throw it into a list so that I can just start curating as I go along and then they can be bigger, but what they’ll have are sections. So I’ll have maybe my top five or something and I’ll have a section that I’ll have the top or I’ll have the one maybe a section that’s worth being aware of people that we should know, but maybe they’re not in my top five. And then there’s probably a section that has more of the ones that could be a crazy idea that maybe might not make sense and then just kind of do it that way.
So I think it’s I think they can have, I mean, they can be as, I guess, as big as I want them to be. So I don’t know what that number is, though. It’s not hundreds of names or anything. It’s definitely more finite than that. But eventually you really have a section that you want to really hone in on and talk about. But then sometimes it’s nice for them to see what the landscape is too, for people in that age range and type and stuff. And you’ve nailed it so far, season by season.
Have there been seasons that would have been drastically different if not do, like if things worked out in different ways, or did you tend to lock in the performers that you were hoping for?
I don’t think there’s any, I don’t think we’ve gotten to a performer where we’re like, well, we didn’t get that person, so I guess we’ll just have this person. Hopefully it works kind of thing. It’s never like that. I think it’s very purposeful. I think every person we go to, we have a pretty deep core belief and core feeling, like that gut feeling that they’re going to kill it. You know, it’s not kind of a we’ll wait and see situation.
Awards Radar: I was curious if there’s ever been a situation where say you could not get Juno, who is the center of the season. How do you deal with that? Who would it change the season. I’m not asking you to reveal names or information, just curious if you dealt with that.
Rachel Tenner: Juno obviously brings her own specificity to it and all her amazing choices and instincts and quirks and humor and dramatic capabilities. So it does become her own thing, but I don’t think we would be totally way off and going with somebody else that it would change the way the whole show would structure. I think we would try to still there are certain things we were trying to achieve with that role. And so we would still be finding people that are going to achieve those same ideals.
Awards Radar: I’d like to go through some of your season five casting choices starting with Juno -who after Ted Lasso would not seem to describe the character on paper to many of her fans. She would not have been the first person on my list just because it seems against type. And now after seeing her work, I’m like, ‘Could it be anyone but?’ Can you explain how she was chosen?
Rachel Tenner: Juno is somebody who everyone knows her from Ted Lasso, but she’s actually had a really long career. She’s done a lot of film. And so I’ve been a fan of hers for a very long time. There’s never a project where the moment she comes on screen, she’s not the most captivating person in the scene. She always has something so interesting going on. And in that alone, we knew the depth of her. We knew her how complex she was as an actor.
My understanding of Juno was not only from Ted Lasso. That was kind of just like another layer to see of her versus what I’ve known from her before. So, and I think with that we needed somebody who had that real sweet quality that you really didn’t see that underlying right right off the bat, you don’t see that underlying strength and survival instinct and what she’ll do to, to keep herself alive and protect the ones she loves has that real, she’s tenacious and fearless.
So we thought she just had all the qualities to kind of sell the “Minnesota nice” that we try to do. And yet has that unbelievable strength underneath. And then has the humor. I knew obviously from all the work I’ve seen her do the dramatic capabilities to, to navigate everything.
Awards Radar: And then you have the non-Minnesota nice with Jon Hamm as Roy Tillman. Can you give me some thinking behind him?
Rachel Tenner: I mean, that one was a little bit more I like, not obvious, but that one was a little bit more as far as like who Roy was like his, when you read the scripts, like his agenda and how this guy, how he’s wired and what he thinks of himself and the arrogance that he has, even though he thinks he’s doing like, he thinks he’s doing right by the world, you know what I mean? By his community, by everything, by God, he thinks he’s on the on the right path here. But, so, we were just kind of talking about people who could embody that.
Noah had done a movie with Jon, Lucy in the Sky. He was like super intimate with Jon and had spent a lot of time with him. I think that was kind of like a pretty easy choice like no, no concerns there. It was exciting. I mean, we’ve seen Jon do a lot already I mean, he was so great in Mad Men and then we were all surprised when he comedically showed up for all these projects and then saw how funny he was and then I thought this was kind of a great combination of all of it, you know? Which, I feel like Fargo, that’s Fargo strength is you really get to, like, exercise all those muscles.
Awards Radar: Very much so. And, you really have a knack for villains. Do you have a favorite villain over the five seasons?
Rachel Tenner: I still love David Thewlis in, in season three. He was really, like Juno in the same way, I can’t stop watching that man. Eery time he walks on the screen on, in a scene on anything, I’m always completely captivated. I did love him. I thought he was one of the, an extremely, oh my God, but then there was Billy Bob (Thornton) and Bokeem (Woodbine). We do have a lot of great bad guys.
Sam’s (Sam Spruell) bad guy is definitely very unique and I would say is kind of closest to an homage to Sugar in No Country for Old Men in the where did this guy come from? He’s his own person, his own being.
We did, did a pretty big international search for that role and, and actually we saw so many amazing, fun types. I wish there was a spinoff of his character and they could just create one big weird world of people because there are a lot of great actors, but Sam was amazing and he read and he was just kind of undeniable and that was, that was the end of that.
Awards Radar: Yes, I spoke with him and he has this huge smile on his face. I guess I was expecting him to be more like his character… which I don’t usually do. I was like, wait a second, maybe this is the years after, after the, the biscuit, after those moments of love. But I was like this is not the person I was expecting on the other end of his call. He was delightful. It was quite a treat to speak with him.
Rachel Tenner: Yeah, I think in our industry we all know Sam and we’ve seen him do a lot of stuff and I think this was something different and, and a lot of people have commented to me about how fun it was to see him get to do something like this.
Awards Radar: Like you said about the spinoff, that would be an amazing spinoff. What happens after that finale? How does that meal end? The family would probably lead him to the door, maybe even hug. The what is the journey for Old Munch from there?
Rachel Tenner: He has to go back to his town because I can populate the town. I have a wealth of actors who can populate wherever he came from.
Awards Radar: I would gladly watch that.
Witness all of Rachel Tenner’s impeccable casting on season 5 of Fargo – and all the preceding seasons – streaming on Hulu.
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