Support for Overheard with Evan Smith comes from Hilco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy.

Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial and the Eller Group specializing in crisis management, litigation and public affairs communication EllerGroup.com - I'm Evan Smith.

He's a filmmaker and novelist, who these days is a TV powerhouse, the creator and executive producer of FX's "Fargo," which has earned 70 Emmy Nominations over five seasons.

He's Noah Hawley.

This is "Overheard."

A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

You can really turn the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

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As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

This is "Overheard."

(audience applause) Noah, welcome, good to have you here.

- Thank you.

- And nice to see you and congratulations.

Man, I've told you this a million times, but I love the fifth season of "Fargo" more than almost anything.

- I love it too, thank you.

- It is so great.

And you know, the whole show from start to finish, first season to this season, has been great, but there was something about this season that felt different to me.

Did it feel that way to you?

- Well, what's funny for me, is that every time I'm in the middle of making one, I think, well it's always been Jon Hamm and Juno Temple, that's what "Fargo" is.

And so, I could say that about each one.

But I do feel like this season was concentrated "Fargo."

- Yep.

- In that I feel like it was riffing on the movie, and so there was a lot of, the setup that was familiar to the audience that we were doing our own thing, and then I just really tried to make it the most muscular, lean version of a Fargo story I could.

- Yeah.

Well, for the benefit, we know obviously the show, but let's for the benefit of the people who don't know it.

This is a show that is first of all, based on the film, the Coen Brothers famous film, "Fargo."

- Yes.

- But it is not a television version of the story in the movie.

- Correct.

- There's no Steve Buscemi, there's no wood chipper, right?

- Yes.

(audience laughs) - What is the theory of the case here for the average person who may not know?

- Well, the challenge, because the show, the origin of the show was that MGM, who controlled the rights to the movie.

- Yep.

- Called FX, the network, and said, "Would you like to do a show based on Fargo?"

And FX said, "Yes."

- Does that happen very often by the way?

So many movies are made, how many movies become the subject of a conversation like that?

- Well, it's something that movie studios have, is a library, and so they own a thing that they call intellectual property or IP, and so they're always trying to make more money off of their existing IP, because audiences will remember a movie "Fargo" verses something completely new.

- Right.

Extremely memorable characters in the movie.

- Yes.

- A memorable storyline, and of course the place.

- Right.

- Which becomes really important to the making of the TV show.

- Yeah, it's what Joel and Ethan Coen call, Siberia with family restaurants.

(audience laughs) And so, FX, I'd work with them before, and they called me and said, we're thinking of doing Fargo as a show but we're wondering, can you do it without Marge?

- Yeah.

- Who's the Frances McDormand character.

- McDormand character, right.

- Because of course, you're never gonna out Frances McDormand for Frances McDormand.

- Frances, right.

- And so, I thought, that's a strange thing to ask, because you're asking me to remake the movie into a show, without any of the characters, i.e., none of the story, which basically is can you paint me a picture of this city with all new buildings?

Right?

But it has to feel like "Fargo" by doing something totally new.

And that to me was really interesting, and what I said to them was, why is the movie called, "Fargo," it takes place in Minnesota?

Except that- - Them in this case is FX.

- Is FX.

Yeah, except that the word "Fargo" is evocative of a place, right?

This wilderness, nowhere, friendly Minnesota nice place.

- But also, with something evil just below the surface.

- Right.

- Feels like, right?

- And so, after the movie, "Fargo," "Fargo" also means a kind of story, a true crime story that isn't true, where truth is stranger than fiction.

Right?

And so, if you think of that, then "Fargo" becomes a kind of state of mind.

- Right.

- And then you go, all right, well here's a story, does that feel like "Fargo?"

It can be a one-to-one correlation, season one where the car salesman's an insurance salesmen, but can it also be a 1979 crime epic about the death of the family business and the rise of corporate America.

- The critical piece which you've alluded to is that the story season to season is a different story and the character season to season are different characters.

And that's obviously unusual in television.

Not unprecedented, but you've made essentially a serial with different stories that are loosely, thematically related, but they're very very different.

- Yes.

- I mean, I found them watching them to be very different, the fifth is very different from the first.

But it's all of a piece.

- Yeah, it's a know it when I see it.

- Was that your idea or their idea?

- That was my idea.

I said, look, I don't think it can be television show, because what makes the movie so powerful is that at the end of it, she's seen the worst case she'll ever see.

She's got two more months till she has this baby.

He got the three cent stamp.

And tomorrow, she wakes up and it's a normal day.

- Right.

- But if she wakes up tomorrow and it's another crazy Coen Brothers case, you can't say it's a true story anymore.

Right?

And so, but we could do it where every year, is a different true story, and that turned out to be a really exciting, challenging, terrifying recipe, for trying to make something completely different, that feels the same.

- Well, it's different for you every time, it's different for us every time, and it occurs to me, not a TV guy, but if I were in the business of casting for a show like this, having it be different characters from season to season means I might be able to get some people to commit to do a season, as opposed to committing to do a whole series.

- Yes.

- Right?

So, you can get really great people as you have every season.

- Yeah, the limited series is great for that, in terms of casting.

And I'm so lucky with the actors that I've worked with every year.

But no, I don't think that Ewan McGregor would've signed on for five seasons of television, or Chris Rock, or Billy Bob Thornton.

You're asking for a finite amount of their time, and as an actor, if you think about what playing 10 hours of a character is, versus two hours, I end up working with a lot of actors who tell me afterwards that they've been spoiled now and it's hard for them to say yes to scripts because they don't have that depth of experience.

- Just go back to being a regular old two hours, right?

They don't enjoy that.

How are the Coens involved?

The Coens are called out of course properly in the credits.

- Yes.

- For having birthed this thing originally.

- Yeah.

- But what has their involvement been at any level at any point?

- I mean, it's mostly name only.

They were involved when the show was setup before I came along, and they said, "If we like a script, you can put our name on it, "if not, you know where to send the check."

And then they read the script, they said very nice things to me about the script.

But they said, "Look, it's not our medium, you seem to know what you're doing."

- But they said grace over it implicitly, if not explicitly.

- They have.

I mean, we showed them the first season, the first episode of the first season.

I'm not sure they've ever watched another episode.

Because we knew that we would be asked when we launched the show, and Ethan Coen said, "Yeah, good."

Which to him is a high praise.

- Right.

A man of few words.

- Exactly.

- Right.

- And so, every once in a while, I'll see them in New York, or I'll call Joel and say I hear you need a new pool, so I'm gonna do another season of "Fargo."

(audience laughs) - Gots to get paid.

- Yeah.

But it must be strange for them, imagine in New York City, every few years, you walk out of your apartment and there are bus ads for "Fargo" and Subway ads for "Fargo."

A movie you made in 1984.

- You say, what year is it exactly?

- Right, 1985.

- Yeah.

- And this thing just keeps going.

- Amazing.

Your role has changed how over the five seasons?

- Well, the only thing that I've added in is directing.

I did some second unit directing in the first year, but really, when you're the showrunner of a show, it's like six jobs.

- Yep.

- I'm the lead writer.

First year, I wrote all the episodes.

I hire the directors, I prep the directors.

I make all the artistic choices.

This actor should be wearing this, this room should look like that, etc.

- You're involved with casting, surely.

- Yes.

I do all the casting.

And then I also have to do the managerial work.

I have to, there's budgeting, there's location work, there's managing up to the corporation that pays for it, etc, etc.

And so, in the second season, I then thought well, the problem still is that there's a layer between me and the material, right, which is I have a vision for it in my head and I can explain that to other people and have them direct.

But you never get 100% of what you're looking for, and so starting in season two, I said, look, every year is a new movie, I need to set the tone of it, what's it gonna look like, what's our cinematic approach, tone of voice, etc.

And so, that's what I've added into it since then.

- That word showrunner has moved into the kind of popular vernacular, in a way that I think a lot of people go, oh he's the showrunner, but they don't now what that actually means.

It's like mail carrier.

- Showrunner runs the show, right?

- Runs the show, exactly.

- It's the most obvious thing in the world.

- Yes.

- You run the show.

- Yes, it is a onomatopoetic or whatever.

Yeah, that's what I do, I'm responsible, I become the CEO of a $70 million corporation that is "Fargo."

But I'm like the pirate on the ship, right, because my philosophy is always, this could go horribly.

I love that feeling on the first day coming on set, because I know I'm taking a risk, right?

Well no one's ever done this before, and as supportive as the network is, I get the same note every year.

They're like, "It just doesn't feel like last year."

And like, I know, it's never.

- Do they mean that in a positive or negative way?

- Well, they're you know, I don't think anyone else does this for them, and so three years will go by and they'll forget the working with me experience, and they'll work with a lot of other people, and then I'll come back and do my thing.

- Oh no, the pirate's back.

- Yeah, the pirate is back.

And you know what's fascinating to me about it is that you're gonna feel all the same feelings, just in different places for different reasons.

You're gonna feel that three cent stamp, moment you're gonna feel that wood chipper moment.

You know what I mean?

You're gonna feel the, oh, think I'm gonna barf.

You're gonna feel those moments in the movie and the terror of the violence, and the absurdity of some of the humor, and then the genuineness of the decency of the characters.

- Could I talk to you a little bit about season five, just for a second, because I feel like in season five, you really hit a sweet spot on casting.

I thought that the casting in the first four seasons was great, but in particular, Jon Hamm and Juno Temple.

Juno Temple, most of us only know from Ted Lasso.

Right?

Reasonably.

- Correct.

- Reasonable to say that.

And she seemed like an extraordinary person who you made ordinary in this season of "Fargo."

Whereas Jon Hamm, who we've seen a million times, felt ordinary to us, and at least to me felt extraordinary in the way that you put him in this series.

When he got out of the water with his pierced nipple and his bare butt.

- Yeah.

- I thought to myself, this is Jon Hamm taking a risk, but it's also Noah taking a risk.

You presented a different view of both of those actors.

- Yes.

- Than I had seen before.

- Well, then I put him in a towel that had his own face on it.

- Well.

(audience laughs) Cherry on the sundae, right?

- Yeah, Juno, what's fascinating about Juno is that her father is Julian Temple, who is, in the 80's, was a documentary filmmaker and music producer.

And so, she grew up in this crazy.

- Family business, right?

- Yeah, she grew up in this sorta crazy rock and roll London world.

And yes, as you said, I turned her into housewife and mother and she sold it so convincingly.

- So convincingly.

I couldn't, actually halfway through the season, remember that that wasn't her accent.

- Yes.

- Right, like she pulled it off so convincingly.

- Well, she stayed in it all week, and then if you called her on a Sunday, this British person would answer the phone.

(audience laughs) And it would be confusing.

- On the seventh day, the accent rests.

- Exactly, exactly.

- And then Hamm, who has really I think demonstrated his range in a lot of way over his career, but never something like this.

As evil as he could've possibly been.

- No, and I told him going into it, 'cause I had made a movie with him before, so I know him pretty well, and I said, look, this is a character part, it's not a leading man part, it's not handsome on a horse.

You have to really go to the dark places that this guy is at.

And Jon is not a process actor, he'll say I think I got something for the voice, and I'll say, great, he doesn't want to have long intellectual conversations about the underlying themes etc, etc.

And I respond to what the actors, how the actors want to engage with the material.

And so, you show up and you see what he does, and then if I have a thought, I'll tell him, and he'll make an adjustment.

- He's responsive.

- I mean, seven seasons of Mad Men, you know.

- Right.

- Yeah, he knows the drill.

- So, those two I thought were extraordinary, but again, going back to the conversation that we had offline from the show, during the season, Jennifer Jason Leigh for me was the revelation.

I've been watching Jennifer Jason Leigh in movies for so many years, and yet her character was the breakout for me of all.

And her lockjaw rich lady voice was one of the best things that I could remember seeing on television.

Every time she would talk, I was just dying.

- Yeah.

- Like, I though that she just killed it.

And again, didn't necessarily think of her in that way before, but she's fantastic.

- Well, she asked me if there were any role models or comps that she should look at, and I had her look at William F. Buckley in the 60's.

- You literally did.

- I did.

- We haven't talked about that before, you literally did it.

- I did.

I said, go watch some William F. Buckley.

What I didn't mean was come back sounding like William F. Buckley.

(audience laughs) - But you know, kind of, I mean.

- And she did, which I didn't realize until I rolled the camera the first time, and I thought, oh okay, well that's a little much, but let's dial her back 'cause I like.

- Right, but still works though.

- I like where she's living with it.

- It works.

- Yeah.

- All right, so anyway, great, love all the feels about season five, wonderful.

Will there be a season six?

- Yeah, there should be a season six I think.

I don't think it's gonna come soon, but they never come soon.

There's a lot that goes into a season of "Fargo" from just making sure you're not repeating yourself, but it's for me, it's really an exploration of this great American experiment of ours.

And a lot of it is that line and here you are in this beautiful day, and for what, a little bit of money, there's always this capitalism, the things that people do for money.

So there's always an angle on that.

And then 10 hours of storytelling, there's a lot, you gotta have a lot of ideas and characters and stuff going into it.

- Takes a while to figure out what it's gonna be.

- Yeah.

- So, the next thing you have on the slate is Alien: Earth.

- Which who gets to do "Fargo" and "Alien?"

And "Alien."

- Yeah.

- So, this will be the second time that you're essentially interpreting or reinterpreting a film project for television.

- Yes.

- And it also will not be the retelling of the story again in the film, "Alien" or any of its sequels.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I like to say if I have a skill, it's in understanding what the original film made me feel and why.

And then recreating those feelings for you in different ways through a different story.

And so, with "Alien", there are a number of elements to it obviously that are iconic, which is this, you have this terrifying monster with this crazy life cycle that just gets worse and worse, and you have these space truckers, there's definitely a blue collar element to the show, to the movie, and the second movie as well.

They become grunts.

But then, for me, what's really interesting is, is the moment in which Ian Holm reveals himself to be an android.

And you think, oh, so it's not just a monster movie, it's humanity trapped between our primordial parasitic past and the AI future, and they're both trying to kill us, right?

And so, now it feels like there's something to talk about.

- Yikes!

- Yeah.

(audience laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Oh, did I say AI future, I mean.

- Well I mean, I was kinda, I liked where you're going and then you scared the hell outta me actually.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Right, yeah.

So, this was also your idea or somebody else's idea?

- Well, FX has come to me, I have this relationship with them, I did a show called, "Legion."

- Legion, right.

- Because they came to me and said, is there anything in the X-Men world that would be interesting to you?

And they were very non-specific, and so I came up with an idea that seemed interesting to me.

And here, they said "Alien" to me, and what would you do with it?

And I'm guilty of, if you give me a thought, I'll have an idea.

So I did, and it's just about making it... You know those movies are survival stories, right?

They're two hour survival stories.

You can do a survival story over 50 hours, right?

You have to do something else.

And my instinct is always, well, take the creature out of it, what's the show?

Right?

Take the superhero powers out of Legion, what's the show?

It's a guy who either has a mental illness or he doesn't.

And that's the story, right?

And so, here, it's like what is the show without the creature?

Now, put the creature back, how does the creature feed into the themes of the show and the characters?

- Yep.

- And so, that was my approach to it.

- So, this season is shot, it's delivered.

- Yes, yes.

- We're a year out probably from seeing it as we sit here?

- Yeah, sometime next summer probably.

I haven't edited all of them yet, it's a long process, especially- - But you're excite about it.

- Yeah.

- So, in the time we have remaining, I wanna talk about you, I mean, I think that the art is great, but I'm always interested in the artist.

And in your case, you took an unlikely path I think to get here.

Right?

- Yeah.

- Grew up in New York, went to college in Upstate New York, did not initially come out of college thinking I want to do this.

- No.

No, and- - You were gonna be a rock star.

- I was.

I was, but I'm not a night person.

(audience laughs) So that was.

- Yeah, that would tend to be a problem.

- That was a challenge.

I was like, 5 o'clock in the afternoon, I will rock this place, but 11 o'clock at night.

- Happy hour bar band, right?

- Yes, exactly.

And so, yeah.

And so, I was working day jobs, I worked at the Legal Aid Society in New York City in the family courts, so working with abuse and neglect cases and juvenile delinquency cases.

- And your mother had been a writer and particularly of books and a book, specifically on that subject, like, that specifically.

- Yes.

- Was something that you had some knowledge.

- My mother wrote the first Speakout on Incest in 1979.

- Extraordinary writer, yeah.

- She wrote books about family violence and kids in private psych hospitals.

And so, I went and did that work, and it's a, you know, it's a stressful job.

- Right.

- I was supporting 40 lawyers each with a case load of 100 and no time to prep.

And so, I turned to fiction writing as an outlet, a way to process.

- So, started really as a novelist.

- Yeah.

- Before anything else.

- Yeah, I started as a novelist, and then in '97 I published- - "Conspiracy of Tall Men" was the first of six novels you've written.

That was 26 years ago.

- I know.

Oof.

- Amazing.

- Yeah.

And then, my motto is, what else can I get away with?

And so, I was living in San Francisco, as part of a, I had a writer's collective, 21 writers and filmmakers, we had our own offices in a converted dog and cat hospital.

And I had a friend who was doing some screenwriting and I would break the story with him, and then I thought, well let me try it, and so I wrote a script that got me an agent, they got me meetings, and they said, well, you should say what you want to do next when you come down for these meetings.

And so, I came up with a pitch for a movie that I sold in those first meetings, and then sold the original script I wrote, and then "Conspiracy of Tall Men" had been optioned and so I was hired to adapt that.

And so, within six months, I had this whole other career.

- Incredible.

Takes so long for so many other people.

- Yeah.

I always say, you have to be good enough to get in the room, you gotta be good in the room, and you gotta deliver when you leave the room.

And if you can do those three things, the work stands for itself, it gets you in the meeting, and then you gotta be good in the room.

And then what you promise them, you have to deliver.

And if you can do that, then you can start to build it.

- It occurs to me, TV today is so different from when we were, we're about the same age, when we were growing up watching TV.

Note the anniversary, 25th anniversary of the Sopranos, going on television is this year, 2024, 25 years.

25 years since the "West Wing" came on.

In a lot of ways, "Fargo" will stand I think alongside some of the best shows of our lifetime.

But also, it is such a different moment for TV than it was then, and I wonder if that's been part of the success of the work that you've done, that opportunity to distribute along different platforms or in different channels, or to do things that traditionally people in television, Aaron Sorkin, even David Chase, on a premium cable channel, really couldn't do.

- Yeah.

Is that part of what's gone on here?

- Well, there was a stretch between when "Fargo" first came out, 2014, until about the pandemic.

In which you had so many players entering this making television phase.

You went from 280 shows to 500 shows.

- Yeah.

This is the movies is the new TV, or TV is the new movies phase of entertainment.

- Right.

And so, the only way that say an AMC, or a Starz or a MGM streamer, the only way that they could differentiate themselves is to make something different and better.

- Yep.

- So, for artists, it became, well I have a weird idea, or an interesting take on something.

And TV became this artistic medium, in which you had a lot of experimentation, you had a lot of novelistic storytelling, things that you couldn't have done on commercial television back then.

And it became indulgent in a way.

I certainly made a fourth season of "Fargo" that had 65, 70-minute episodes.

It was a huge swing.

- But you're liberated from the constraints of traditional television, and that has been a big help.

- Yeah, I mean, "Legion" was a surrealist superhero story, and I couldn't have done that if there had been constraints on the business.

The other thing of course was that people just started spending crazy amounts of money.

- Crazy amounts.

- So then you could really experiment with it.

The thing with FX is that we never have the money that anybody else has, so I have to make it look like it cost that, while really making it cost something less.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And honestly, the streaming services expose your product, the thing you create to so many more people, and over a long tail, and that's a big help because at the end of the day, the audience is what you're focused on.

- Yeah, I mean, now that FX is on Hulu, when we launch a season of FX on Hulu, you get the other four seasons being watched.

It becomes this snowball.

- Well, people get to go back and see the thing that they missed.

- Right.

And well, what's fun about the show I think, is you could watch it in any order.

- Right.

- Yeah.

I finally met Steve Buscemi at a- - I love we start with Buscemi, we end with Buscemi.

Tell me about that.

- I met him at the Tribeca Film Festival and it turned out he was a big fan of the show, which I really was very happy to hear.

And he said, "You know I was introduced to someone yesterday, "and they said, oh Steve was in "Fargo."

And the guy said, "What season?"

- Oh.

(audience laughs) Oh.

- And he was a very good sport about it.

- Burn.

- He was a very good sport about it.

- That is a sick burn.

That's actually great.

All right, hey, I appreciate you giving us time today.

Thank you.

- My pleasure.

Noah Hawley, give him a big hand.

(audience applause) Thank you very much, man.

We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard, to find invitations to interviews, Q&A's with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- There are all these elements that go into a season of "Fargo" like I said.

And so this obviously, we have a constitutional sheriff character, there's a lot of this sort of alt right world, this Tiger King America morality and etc.

And so, a lot of us are just trying to understand what that world is actually like.

Support for Overheard with Evan Smith comes from Hilco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy.

Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial and the Eller Group specializing in crisis management, litigation and public affairs communication EllerGroup.com (gentle flute music)