Through three seasons of Fargo, creator Noah Hawley has come up with many incredible character names. In season one, there was Lorne Malvo, Lester Nygaard, and agents Budge and Pepper; season two introduced Bear Gerhardt and Ronald Reagan (what a name!); and who could forget Gloria Burgle, Maurice LeFay, and Nikki Swango in season three? “It’s not conscious,” Hawley told us about his process for figuring out names. “I’m not trying to be cute. If I have been cute, then that horrifies me a little bit… They pop into my head and they either work or they don’t.” Let me settle this debate for him: they work.
FX announced the cast for Fargo season four (or “Year Four,” as the network refers to it) on Thursday and, once again, it’s a fine collection of character actors playing some morally-conflicted weirdos. Chris Rock’s character still doesn’t have a name, but everyone else does, including Boardwalk Empire‘s Jack Huston as Odis Weff, Jason Schwartzman as Josto Fadda, Jessie Buckley (who was great in Chernobyl and Oscar-worthy in Wild Rose) as Oraetta Mayflower, and singer Andrew Bird as Thurman Smutney. Here’s the rest.
JACK HUSTON as “Odis Weff”
JASON SCHWARTZMAN as “Josto Fadda”
BEN WHISHAW as “Rabbi Milligan”
JESSIE BUCKLEY as ”Oraetta Mayflower”
SALVATORE ESPOSITO as “Gaetano Fadda”
ANDREW BIRD as “Thurman Smutney”
JEREMIE HARRIS as “Leon Bittle”
GAETANO BRUNO as “Constant Calamita”
ANJI WHITE as “Dibrell Smutney”
FRANCESCO ACQUAROLI as “Ebal Violante”
E’MYRI CRUTCHFIELD as “Ethelrida Pearl Smutney”
AMBER MIDTHUNDER (recurring) as “Swanee Capps”
Amber Midthunder, her actual name, sounds more like a Fargo character than Swanee Capps, her character name. FX also revealed the season summary.
In 1950, at the end of two great American migrations — that of Southern Europeans from countries like Italy, who came to the US at the turn of the last century and settled in northern cities like New York, Chicago — and African Americans who left the south in great numbers to escape Jim Crow and moved to those same cities — you saw a collision of outsiders, all fighting for a piece of the American dream. In Kansas City, Missouri, two criminal syndicates have struck an uneasy peace. One Italian, one African American. Together they control an alternate economy — that of exploitation, graft and drugs. This too is the history of America. To cement their peace, the heads of both families have traded their youngest sons.
Chris Rock plays the head of one family, a man who — in order to prosper — has surrendered his youngest boy to his enemy, and who must in turn raise his enemy’s son as his own. It’s an uneasy peace, but profitable. And then the head of the Kansas City mafia goes into the hospital for routine surgery and dies. And everything changes. It’s a story of immigration and assimilation, and the things we do for money. And as always, a story of basically decent people who are probably in over their heads. You know, Fargo.
Fargo returns to FX in 2020.
