This “Fargo” role feels like home

Jumping into the compelling “Fargo” characters, actors have tried different methods.
Some have tried speech coaches or studied tapes; David Rysdahl (shown here) had a quicker method.
“I called up my dad and listened to him,” he said. “I ended up calling my aunts and uncles, too.”
The result works wonderfully. In the newest “Fargo” mini-series – debuting at 10 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 21) on FX – he’s Wayne Lyon, sweet-spirited and optimistic and not sure why people near his wife keep being killed or maimed.
On the one hand, he said, “Fargo” characters are like the folks he grew up with in New Ulm, Minnesota. “People are generally really neighborly and care for each other.”
On the other, there’s “the duality” of mankind anywhere. “We can love our family and also put people into a wood-chipper.”
In this case, Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) is a Minnesota mom who’s busy with the PTA. Then something triggers people from her past, including a North Dakota sheriff (Jon Hamm). As bodies pile up, she’s in denial; so is her husband, Wayne … while his wealthy mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) rages.
Some people will see him as a mere patsy, but Rysdahl resists. “He did start his own car dealership,” he said in a phone interview. “And he married a woman his mother doesn’t like. (Leigh) and I talked about that: What was that wedding like? What was it like the first time he brought her home to dinner?”
Mostly, Wayne embodies “Minnesota nice.” That’s a notion that this round of “Fargo” slightly pooh-poohs … but one that exists in real life.
(One study actually found that a taking-turns sort of traffic circle works well everywhere …except in Minnesota. There, people are too nice and the traffic moves too slowly.)
Rysdahl says he grew up around pleasant people in New Ulm, a Minnesota city of 14,000. Since this is mainly a German area in the western part of the state, the classic accent – which has Scandinavian roots and is strongest up North – wasn’t as pronouncd. But he heard it from his dad, who is Scandinavian, from his paternal relatives and at St. Olaf College.
Rysdahl planned to be a doctor like his dad, but changed his mind doing medical work in Guatemala. “Honestly, I get queasy. I loved talking to people more than” treating them.
He soon tried a Shakespeare festival in Winona, Minn., then took the huge move to New York City. That’s where the Wayne-like optimism paid off.
Many people would have found that painful – 15 years in a different world, while rarely getting a solid role. But Rysdahl says he enjoyed acting in shorts for students or early-career filmmakers.
One source (imdb.com) lists 40 shorts he’s been in. “There were more than that,” he said. “I just love being around creative people – writers and directors and actors.”
One of those people is Zazie Beetz, his writing partner, girlfriend (“we’ve been together for 10 years”) and now wife.
Her career took off. She was the female lead in “Atlanta” (receiving an Emmy nomination) and was in two superhero films – “Deadpool 2” (as Domino) and “Joker” (as Sophie, the neighbor).
His didn’t. But he’s in “Oppenheimer” (playing a real-life scientist whose wife rose from typist to become a plutonium chemist) and got a chance to tape a “Fargo” audition.
Yes, he realized this was the perfect role. Still, he tried not to covet it too much. “If you fall in love with a role and don’t get it, it can be crushing,” Rysdahl said. “I just enjoyed the process and sent it in.”
Then he was talking via Zoom to Noah Hawley, the “Fargo” writer-director, who said something Rysdahl already believed: “Don’t make him a joke.”
The “Fargo” accent and attitude have been captured by actors from Texas (Allison Tolman, Jesse Plemons), England (Temple, Martin Freeman) and Scotland (Ewan McGregor). Now it’s been mastered by someone who sort of grew up in Wayne’s world.