Interview: Jon Hamm on What it Means to Be “Minnesota Nice” and Dismantling the American Western in ‘Fargo’

It’s difficult to think of American iconography without recalling one of Jon Hamm’s signature projects, Mad Men. Over seven seasons, Hamm portrayed Don Draper, one of television history’s most complicated men, ultimately earning six acting nominations at the Emmys and winning Outstanding Lead Actor in Drama Series for the show’s perfect series finale, Person to Person. Underneath Don’s philandering and creative genius, lies Hamm’s layered, brilliant performance that linked the character’s rags-to-riches story with the images he created to sell the American Dream. He was American society distilled down into a single character. 

In the fFifth Season of FX’s anthology series Fargo, Hamm tackles a new kind of American iconography, the American Western. He plays the haughty, malevolent Sheriff Roy Tillman, a man who believes he’s entirely above the law and who is hellbent on tracking down his runaway ex-wife, Dot (Juno Temple). Having previously collaborated with Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley (Legion, Lucy in the Sky), Hamm was eager to work together again, and Roy was the perfect fit, accessing his natural ability to play American men hiding a more sinister side. Fans of his scene-stealing comedic work (Bridesmaids, 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) also won’t be surprised that Hamm balances the Fargo universe’s tricky tonal balance of drama and comedy perfectly, imbuing his character with menace and a wry sense of humor. It’s one of the best performances of his career. 

This year, Hamm is multi-nominated at the Emmys (Fargo, The Morning Show) and I was delighted to speak with him about his relationship with Fargo and the Coen Brothers, creating an inner life for Roy, and the complexities of what it means to be, “Minnesota Nice.”

Sophia Ciminello: Hi Jon, Thank you so much for speaking with me today, and congratulations on your Emmy nominations!

JH: Thank you very much! I’m very excited.

SC: What was your relationship to Fargo, the film and the series before taking on this role?

JH: Well, I was a massive fan of the film and of the Coen Brothers in general. Their previous movies were amazing. Blood Simple and Raising Arizona had completely different sensibilities, obviously, but they had such a skewed comic perspective. Especially Raising Arizona–that’s such specific filmmaking and beautiful storytelling, and that’s synthesized with Fargo, which is such an amazingly interesting tonal experience, so to speak. It was so dark and funny and weird and again, couched in such beautiful filmmaking.

So, when I heard they were going to be making a TV show of it, I was a little bit like, “Oh, that’s probably not going to be very good,” (laughs) or it will be disappointing in some way or unnecessary or all of the above. But then, when I had seen what they’d done with the first season and how beautifully they’d captured the tone of the storytelling, I thought the filmmaking was also beautifully cinematic. It had this dark, weirdly funny, dangerous, and creepy tone. Especially how wonderful Billy Bob was, how wonderful everyone was really in the first season, it was like, “Oh, well this is something completely different and yet somehow kind of related and adjacent to the general universe of what the movie was about.” I was immediately hooked, and then once I started watching subsequent seasons, it was so impressive what Noah specifically had done again in expanding it and talking about the general bleakness and rot that organized crime has had in the upper midwest, specifically and in America even more generally. I just thought this had so much more leeway to investigate all of these different things. And then what he did in the fourth season, which was such an odd breakaway story, was so ambitious and tremendous. I talked to Noah, and we pledged to work together.

SC: And Noah gives this season a really unique structure where Roy and Dot are on parallel paths, and you’re waiting for them to inevitably share the screen. What did you think of that approach to the storytelling?

JH: I thought it was a brilliant idea. You set up these two characters on parallel tracks, but as the narrative of the story gets thicker and more descriptive in its storytelling, we see, well, maybe they’re not really on parallel tracks after all. The world is curved, and these tracks are going to smash into one another with pretty violent results because of the history that the two have, which is revealed in dribs and drabs over the course of the first six or seven episodes. It’s rightfully suspenseful and it’s rightfully terrifying when they do meet up, but it’s also tremendously satisfying when the resolution comes. 

SC: You mentioned Billy Bob Thornton earlier, and you also play such a wicked villain this season. I’d love to know what your early conversations with Noah were like about Roy. Did you use any real people, characters, or images to inspire your character? I know I thought of a few people when I was watching…

JH: (laughs) Yeah, I think there’s that pretty obvious main influence of the person who thinks they’re above the law in our current political landscape. Noah also really wanted this idea of…he told me, “I want him to be the Marlboro Man.” 

SC: Oh, definitely. That All-American Cowboy. I love the final shot of the fourth episode when Roy rides off into the sunset like a hero, and it really disrupts the ideas found in those classic American westerns. 

JH: Exactly. That image of what we think of as this sort of rugged, masculine, individualist, freedom-loving cowboy. And I think there’s a lot to unpack with that, especially when you scratch the surface of that and go a little deeper. I always say with the Marlboro Man, “That’s a wonderful image, but that dude is dead; he died of lung cancer.” The irony is not lost that that sort of lifestyle is not exactly sustainable and neither is Roy’s. You know, he sets himself up to fight the man and be this bulwark against what he sees as federal overreach or however you want to put it, but what he really is is breaking the law, and that’s not allowed. So he sets it in this vernacular that a lot of people respond to, along with all of the dog whistles and words about freedom and what have you. And those American Westerns were a big part of what this particular season is trying to break down. It’s setting up these kinds of iconic images and then looking at them from a different angle. 

SC: And Roy never feels like a caricature, cartoon villain, or even an archetype. How did you find a more specific interior life for the character?

JH: That was the challenge, right? You don’t want this to be jokey. You don’t want him to be a parody of himself and I think that that’s a real danger when you get into these guys who are bigger than life. But what you have to do is keep it grounded and real, and know that as skewed and wrong-headed as it can be, there’s still a belief system that Roy adheres to. It just doesn’t happen to align with something that we consider to be…legal (laughs). 

SC: (laughs) Not at all. We talked a bit about this tonal balance with the Coen brothers, but this has so much comedy in it and even though Roy is a villain, so much of the comedy comes from him. I think we have to talk about Roy’s nipple rings and the towel with his name and face on it. 

JH: (Laughs) Oh, yeah.

SC: (laughs) Was this Noah’s idea? What was your reaction when you saw these details for Roy?

JH: Well, it was Noah’s idea. I will not steal that from him (laughs). But like we were saying, we wanted this person to have an inner life, and he says it in the show that he does have–I don’t know if it’s a hedonistic streak, but he appreciates the pleasures of life. For him, there is that version of the Tiger King who is outwardly looking one way and inwardly, there is a different aspect to him, and I think that’s kind of how everybody is. You know, we’ve all been taught to not judge a book by its cover, and Roy is certainly an example of that. 

SC: One of the core themes of the film and the series is the idea of “Minnesota Nice.” Why do you think this is such a rich starting point for the stories told across the series?

JH: I think part of it is that there’s an aspect of ruralness and small-townness to what people think of…I mean we talk about “Minnesota Nice” in the show, but Fargo is in North Dakota. But it is kind of a small-town thing; even in the movie, they go up to these northern smaller towns, you know, “Go Bears” (laughs). It has this kind of small-town community aspect to it. There’s a sense that everybody knows everybody, everybody’s a bit in everybody’s business, and everybody has assumptions about other people. That can lead to problems, but that can also be people looking out for one another, and we see it a lot in the law enforcement in the show. They have the community’s best interests, and they take care of the ne’er-do-wells, but sometimes the ne’er-do-wells are homegrown like Roy, and other times they’re mystical creatures. The series and the universe play with that idea of what makes for a successful community, and the irony of this “Minnesota Nice” and this small-town niceness is that it’s really only skin deep, you know?

SC: Oh, yes. I’m thinking of the opening scene of the season.

JH: Right, when you see the opening of the whole thing, it starts with a brawl at a school meeting. So, you know, it is remarking on what we’re talking about when we say that people are more pleasant in small towns or whatnot. Are they really?

SC: Exactly. There’s so much underneath that, just like in the series. Jon, thank you so much for speaking with me today, and good luck at the Emmys!

JH: Hey, thanks so much. Take care.

Jon Hamm is Emmy-nominated in the category of Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for Fargo.