Posted in: FX, Preview, TV | Tagged: anthology, ben whishaw, bleeding cool, cable, chris rock, coen brothers, fargo, fx, FXX, Jack Huston, jason schwartzman, season 4, streaming, television, tv

"Fargo" Season 4: Jack Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, 9 More Join FX Anthology

It was at the August 2018 Television Critics Association's (TCA) summer press tour event when it was announced that comedian/actor Chris Rock (upcoming Saw remake/reboot/sequel) will headline a fourth season of series creator Noah Hawley's Emmy award-winning FX anthology Fargo, as head of a crime family in 1950's Kansas City, Missouri. Well, the network has thrown open the casting doors – with Jack Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, and 9 more joining the cast, with the series set to premiere in 2020.

Schwartzman will play Josto Fadda, while Whishaw plays Rabbi Milligan and Huston is set as Odis Weff. Additional cast members include Jessie Buckley (Oraetta Mayflower), Salvatore Esposito (Gaetano Fadda), Andrew Bird (Thurman Smutney), Jeremie Harris (Leon Bittle), Gaetano Bruon (Constant Calamita), Anji White (Dibrell Smutney), Francesco Acquaroli (Ebal Violante), Emyri Crutchfield (Ethelrida Pearl Smutney), and Amber Midthunder (Swanee Capps).

Hawley returns as showrunner, writer and director. Joel & Ethan Coen, Warren Littlefield, and John Cameron have also served as executive producers – with production handled by MGM Television and FX Productions.

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 eldest sons.

Rock plays the head of one family, a man who — in order to prosper — has surrendered his oldest boy to his enemy, and who must in turn raise his son's enemy 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.

Interestingly, Hawley wasn't sure what direction Fargo would take if there was a fourth season of the series when he spoke to The New York Times in June 2017:

"I don't. It's a big challenge, every one of these — to come up with both a crime to hang it on and a large cast of characters on a collision course — each has to be new and interesting and have a different point of view. But we are exploring certain archetypes that are inescapable on a moral spectrum: There always has to be a Marge and a Jerry and a [Steve] Buscemi and a Peter Stormare, those kinds of pure good and pure evil and moral challenges in the middle. At a certain point, you don't want to repeat yourself, so the question becomes: 'What's left to say? What's interesting to say?'"

Variety

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