“Fargo’s” highly-anticipated fourth season was just one production caught in the crosshairs of the coronavirus pandemic that forced production shutdowns across the globe. With only nine of the 11 episodes produced, original plans for a spring launch (and 2020 Emmy eligibility) were scrapped quickly, but only a few months later cameras were back up for the final two episodes, John Landgraf, chairman of FX Network and FX Productions, said Wednesday.
Production on these final two episodes of the newest installment of Noah Hawley’s anthology series wrapped Sept. 8, with Landgraf praising Hawley for his attention to and care regarding the health and safety of his cast and crew during a virtual press conference for the network’s fall lineup.
Hawley, Landgraf revealed, sent a note to the cast and crew saying, “We’re all in this together,” meaning that it “not only matters what you do [in terms of] following the procedures when you’re at work but it matters what you do on the weekends” as well.
“Fargo” did something unprecedented for FX, which was shoot the final two episodes simultaneously, with two directors and two full A-units, Landgraf continued. Approximately 500 cast and crew members were working at the same time, he said, in order to wrap production as quickly as possible but also “maintain as much quarantine and isolation” as possible.
“Fargo’s” fourth season is the first new installment in three years, and this time it is set in 1950 Kansas City, when two criminal syndicates are jockeying to control an alternate economy and each fighting for a piece of the American dream. The season kicks off with the heads of those syndicates (played by Chris Rock and Jason Schwartzman) trading their youngest sons to each other, but tensions only continue to grow as the season goes on.
“The idea for a crime story where the bosses of both families trade sons as an insurance policy against betrayal was there in the genesis of the idea,” Hawley previously told Variety. “Later it became clear that this would give me a more intimate way to explore the idea of assimilation — not just of individuals into ‘society’ but of an outsider into a family. It would also tell us a lot about the men who took these children in — do they treat their enemy’s child fairly or with disdain? In the end, how the characters in this story treat children tells us everything about whether they are moral or immoral.”
In addition to Rock and Schwartzman, “Fargo” stars E’myri Crutchfield, Jack Huston, Ben Whishaw and Jessie Buckley. The show is executive produced by Hawley, Warren Littlefield, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, and comes from MGM Television and FX Prods.
“Fargo” Season 4 premieres Sept. 27 on FX.