With the success of the first season behind it, Team Fargo is preparing to travel back in time narratively for the second set of episodes featuring “true” crimes in frosty climes. Creator/show runner Noah Hawley has been busy building his cast and has scored a fun addition: Bruce Campbell will play Ronald Reagan.
With the story this season set in 1979 and serving as a prequel to the first, this Fargo finds Patrick Wilson starring as Lou Solverson, a clean-cut Minnesota state patrolman, four years back from Vietnam, where he served in the Navy. A humble and competent man, Lou is a devoted husband to his wife Betsy (Cristin Milioti), and father to four-year-old Molly. Ted Danson will be Hank Larsson, the sheriff of Rock County, Minnesota. An unflappable World War II vet who embodies a certain cowboy poetry, Hank is Lou’s father-in-law.
Nick Offerman is Karl Weathers, the town lawyer of Luverne, Minnesota. A Korean War vet, Karl is a flowery drunk blessed with the gift of gab and the eloquence of a true con artist. Amy Smart is set as Floyd Gerhardt, the matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family. She’s stood by her husband’s side for 40 years, but now that he’s out of the picture she thinks it’s her turn to run things. Brad Garrett, Kieran Culkin, Jeffrey Donovan and Bokeem Woodbine are also all aboard. Rounding out the main casting batch are Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons as Peggy Blomquist, a woman with big-city dreams and a yearning to change her life, while her butcher’s assistant husband Ed wants to support her new-found desire for self-discovery, but isn’t sure how to show it.
“He’s on his first campaign and he makes a swing through Fargo, “network boss John Landgraff has said of how Campbell’s pre-Presidential Reagan will fit in. “Some of the characters have some interactions with him. And some of his movies are also a part of the show.” Given the presence of Jeffrey Donovan in the cast, dare we hope for a Burn Notice reunion?
Elsewhere, Campbell will be in cinemas in Welcome To Purgatory and back on small screens for Ash Vs. Evil Dead.