Season 1 aired, and critics went wild. But the strangest moment came years later, at a fan convention. A young actor asked the panel, "How did you make such darkness feel so human?"
"Simple," Thornton said from the back of the room, wearing sunglasses indoors. "We all knew someone like Lester. Someone like Malvo. Someone like Molly. We just never saw them in a snowbank before."
Then there was Allison Tolman , a virtually unknown Chicago stage actress who auditioned for a tiny role as Deputy Molly Solverson. Hawley was so stunned by her honest, warm intensity that he rewrote the entire season to make her the hero. She filmed her first scene having never been on a major set before—and stole the show from two Oscar nominees. fargo: season 1 cast
The cast became a family of misfits. Freeman taught Tolman card tricks. Thornton gave Odenkirk a hunting knife "for emergencies." When the Emmy nominations came, Tolman cried on Freeman’s shoulder. Thornton didn’t show up—he was rumored to be feeding peanuts to a squirrel in Montana.
When Noah Hawley began casting Fargo 's first season, nobody expected it to work. A TV adaptation of the Coen brothers' beloved film? Starring Martin Freeman —the gentle, hapless Bilbo Baggins—as a cold-blooded killer? And Billy Bob Thornton as a philosophical, devilish drifter with a bowl cut? Season 1 aired, and critics went wild
But Freeman, desperate to break typecasting, begged for the role of Lester Nygaard. He studied Midwestern manners until his natural British charm curdled into passive aggression. On set, between takes, he’d apologize to crew members for "being so horrible."
Then he walked out, leaving a single peanut on the table. "We all knew someone like Lester
The squirrel, presumably, was watching.