Jon Hamm stars in the new season of Fargo as North Dakota frontier lawman Sheriff Roy Tillman; he also, as is revealed by a key scene of his character basking in a hot tub, has pierced nipples.
Series creator and showrunner Noah Hawley came up with the accessory for the character, explaining at season five’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday that “we live in Tiger King America, right — there’s a hedonism to the Christian Right that is unexpected, let’s just put it that way. And I thought it would dimensionalize Jon more than he’s just some sheriff who thumps the Bible.”
For his part, Hamm said of the piercings that “Noah had a pretty great sense of who this character was, and I was on board with going on that journey with him. It was fun.” And of the behind-the-scenes Hollywood magic, the star continued, “They have to paint some latex on your nipples and then they pull it off and then they put a little fake nipple and put a ring through it. It’s the magic of movies. You too can have fake nipples made.”
This season of the hit anthology series is set in 2019 and stars Juno Temple as Dot Lyon, a Midwestern housewife whose mysterious past comes back to haunt her after she lands in hot water with the authorities, with a cast that includes Hamm, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joe Keery, Lamorne Morris, and Richa Moorjani.
“I wanted to make something contemporary that explored what feels like the death of ‘Minnesota Nice’ and how decent people get that back, get back the decency,” Hawley said of his vision for the season. Executive producer Steve Stark continued that it “deals with some issues that are very current today, which are people losing their power base and holding onto virtues that are long gone,” and takes inspiration from the 1996 film more so than previous iterations.
“I think it definitely feels like a sibling of these other seasons,” added Keery. “It feels like it is heavily referencing the original source material and I really enjoy that it feels like a period piece but it’s set in 2019, it’s interesting to look back on something that was so recent and sort of categorize it as a period piece.”
Temple, whom Hawley said he was drawn to because of her “mysterious quality,” said she couldn’t believe when the offer to star came her way.
“The previous installments of this show and the movie — which I’ve been a fan of since I was probably about 14 — it’s a lot of incredible performances, a lot of brilliant writing in the past that you’re like ‘Wow, I’ve got to bring my A-game,’” Temple told THR. “Then there’s the accent, that was a process. But actually starting that really helped me to find who Dot is because the ‘Minnesota Nice,’ which is a real thing, means that you hold yourself and handle situations in a way where you keep it together, even when things are feeling a little out of your control.”
Of that iconic accent, Temple said she was still shooting season three of Ted Lasso when she started preparations, “so it was an interesting time in this little flat in London that we were living in where there was [Ted Lasso character] Keeley, Juno, Juno’s inside voice, and then the birth of Dot.”
She also recalled testing out her accent on her brothers after a few dialect sessions, and “they both just went, ‘When do you start?’ And I was like ‘Oh God!’ But then I’d done another few after that and they were like ‘Wow, that’s a big change,’ so suddenly it started to click and when it clicks you start having a lot of fun with it.” Temple also revealed she stayed in the accent the entire time she was on set “because I think when you have an accent that’s that complex, practicing it with the people you’re hanging out with — if you make mistakes then when you’re actually filming and you slip up on an accent moment, you don’t ruin a take by going ‘Oh no, I messed up.’”
Fargo premieres Nov. 21 on FX.
