Steven Prusakowski
Oh, the power of a smile.
A smile. That may be Sam Spruell’s secret weapon. It certainly was not what I was expecting when I first met the actor for a conversation about his incredible and often terrifying work as Ole Munch on season five of FX’s Fargo, but it is what struck me first. (warning: spoilers ahead)
And, if you have watched the latest season of the enthralling Noah Hawley anthology series you understand how, while unexpected, a smile was probably the most fitting way to start this conversation – just the way the season ended.
Spruell spoke with Awards Radar about the fascinating character that is Ole Munch, an assassin with a long history tasked with kidnapping a housewife named Dot (Juno Temple). The conversation is full of insights into the very complex character of Munch, his process, that finale, plus a surprising amount of smiles.
Below is the complete video interview with Sam Spruell and a selection of highlights from that conversation. Which I highly recommend you watch. A man highly recommends watching the video – you will be grateful.
When you met with Noah, what was the initial pitch of who this character is? And did you know everything about him on day one? Or did you get details revealed as you went on?
Spruell: No, I mean, I read the first four scripts, I think. And one thing I didn’t quite grab hold of in a way that I should have done was how important the sin-eating scene was to my character. Not just as a kind of beginning of who he was, but it really was the key to everything that Ole Munch is. And he’s a guy who’s trapped in sin. He has no way of living but to live in sin. And so he can’t escape it.
It completely kind of consumed his life. And once I understood that level of victimhood, and that lack of choice, then I really began to understand who he was. Then there were the Old Testament kind of aspects to him that Noah (Hawley) was writing.
And to go with the kind of mythical madness of it. He just said, this guy is 500 years old. He’s maybe come from Scandinavia. Well, from Wales via Scandinavia. He’s lived in America for 200 years. He hasn’t spoken for 100 years.
It’s just throwing all these crazy things at me. But in the end, you just start piecing the clues, putting them in some kind of order and making decisions about how a guy is going to move, how he’s going to speak, how he’s going to dress, how he’s going to interact with people in general. And then you start finding this character.
I went back and rewatched it, I was like, ‘My God, every single word this man speaks is like digging into his soul, this pain that’s in there, this 500 years of pain and the debt that he carries. It’s quite incredible.
Spruell: I’m really glad you said that, because that’s a little bit of the pain. That’s what I was trying to explore. I thought he was an amazing character, but it’s not an easy character to play. So you do a day’s filming. You don’t feel great afterwards.
Like even if it went well, your other actors executed brilliantly, you know, you still I still came home feeling pretty low. And he was quite a lonely, sad character to play and then there’s the killing. And yeah, but almost the kind of ending, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about. But there was a kind of cathartic release for him, you know, which I was so grateful for, not only for the story and the show as a whole, but I was like, God, I get to play that as well. And that was really good.
Can you get a little how you developed him and your process of becoming Ole Munch?
Spruell: Well, I mean, it’s lots of people, isn’t it? It’s Noah with his notes and obviously his scripts. So brilliant. But then the costume designer came up with that brilliant costume – and we thought we kind of finesse it.
Ultimately, it’s that silhouette – that shape. It’s a kind of time odd kind of timelessness or a man who doesn’t care what he looks like in this modern setting. He is just this person that kind of gave me a the strength, the personality maybe came from the costume.
I knew he had a Scandinavian name. So I gave him kind of a Scandinavian way of talking or certain sounds that I had studied with the voice coach. And then it was really interesting.
He hadn’t spoken for 100 years. So I thought, well, he struggles with some pronunciations or words that don’t just fly out of his mouth. He has to kind of form them and have difficulty forming them as well. All this kind of lent itself to a kind of a style of speech.
It is the imagination that Noah invites you to approach your characters with. So suddenly, you’ve got all you’ve got a foundation for something and you just let rip. It’s just so unconventional and so much work is conventional.
So when you come across a part like this in a show like Fargo, you are duty bound to think as imaginatively as possible.
I’m almost less into the bells and whistles and more into the kind of depth of feeling and also lots of work that you don’t see, but it just fills your character with a soul. SoI’d walk into work with an old basket I’d found in a park and an old potato. I put it in my dressing room as just a reminder of a guy who has nothing.
He’s got one potato and an old metal basket he’s found next to the river. And that those are his possessions. It’s a trite example, but it’s really whatever helps you get there.
You know, sometimes it can be a piece of music or a bit of poetry for for one of my kind of props that no one ever sees, but was always in my dressing room was an old metal basket and a potato. There you go. That’s the secret to creating a character. (laughs)
Three words to describe Old Munch. If you want, you can do three for the beginning of the series and three for the end of the series.
Spruell: Oh, my goodness. Well, I think there’s so many words, I would go, I would say.
Oh, man. I would say, pay the debt, eat the pancakes.
Love it. Fantastic. Totally nailed it.
Watch all of Sam Spruell’s work in season five of FX’s ‘Fargo’ now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
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