The first season of "Fargo," which was adapted from the Coen brothers' old film was a compelling crime series that had people at the edge of their seats, and for season 2, showrunner slash director slash writer Noah Hawley plans to deliver something bigger and even more exciting.
"I didn't set out to do it, but there was a crime syndicate and a family, and suddenly, there were all these moving pieces," he told Collider in an interview. "It's an epic that is a perfect thing for this moment in history. On an epic level, it is a story about the death of the family business and the rise of corporate America. The idea is how do you turn that into a crime story in a way that doesn't feel like eating your vegetables to people?"
Hawley is such a perfectionist that in season 1, he paid close attention to every detail, even hand-picking the extras who would be included in the series. But for season 2, he loosened up a bit but maintained that "there's no small details."
"Every face in a Coen brothers movie is so specific," he said. "In the very beginning, I went through stacks and stacks of photos, and it pays off, in the end. Everything feels authentic. You feel like you could open any door and there would be a whole world back there."
The characters found in the series are so interesting and complex, and the actors who portray them all seem to fit really well. Hawley was then asked if he wrote the characters with specific actors or actresses in mind, but the showrunner said that he does not work that way.
"It gets cloudy when you do that, on some levels. You start to go, 'Can I see this actor do that thing?'" he revealed. "What I like about separating the writing from production is that we break the whole story and have at least three or four hours written before we start casting. That's really the moment where I go, 'Okay, who are these people? What are the faces that go with these characters?'"
When he finally meets the potential actors, Hawley then sees his characters realized. There are some stars, he said, who would rather "be on something where the character's name is also the name of the show," but he tries to weed them out.
He feels fortunate that the stars he has worked with were very cooperative since they "want to disappear into a world. I think they like that."
