Noah Hawley on the story and setting
Credit: FX
We've set it in 2010. It's a more contemporary story. I think that's exciting. Our first story was set in 2006 but we didn't really deal with what it was like to be in that region in the more contemporary world. I like the idea that we're now living in a very selfie orientated culture. Where people photograph what they're eating and put it up for other people to see. It feels like a social dynamic that's very antithetical to the very Lutheran pragmatism of the region. So much of our crime stories are based around the difficulties people have expressing themselves and communicating. In a lot of ways, the tragedies at the heart of these crimes could all be averted if Jerry Lundegaard could've just asked his father-in-law for the money, or if Lester could've just been honest about who he was, and Peggy Blomquist as well. I like the idea of setting these very pragmatic and humble people against a culture of narcissism and to see what that generates for us story wise.
Season one characters
The danger of bringing Season 1 characters back for another crazy case, it makes the artifice too clear. Suddenly it just feels like we're doing because it's fun and we like these characters. But we'd be breaking our own rules. That's not to say one of our stories won't intersect with characters we've seen before, but I don't think that we can say two years later, Molly gets a phone call and you'll never believe what happens!
Producer Warren Littlefield on starting over each season
The challenge is enormous and it really energizes us. We don't go back to existing sets. We don't go back to existing cast members. It doesn't matter how cold it gets. There's this wonderful sense of…we're making Fargo, you know? We really feel like we get the best of everyone - our actors, our crew. We're making a movie. We're turned on to that madness.
Hawley on UFOs
The violence and chaos of our story became so deadly and absurd that the UFO kind of manifests in that absurdity. There were two things that I felt gave me permission. Obviously the Coen Brothers had used a UFO. Also the fact that in 1979, two years after Close Encounters and Star Wars, it was very much in the zeitgeist. And after the crazy political upheavals of the time, people realized that conspiracies really did go all the way to the top. That sense of paranoia in American life was so heightened that it literally felt like you couldn't trust anything. So those two things created the permission for me to explore those elements.
Fargo will return in 2017, after filming takes place in 2016.