'Fargo' Season 4 Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, And More Join Chris Rock
It's been almost a year since we heard the first details about the next season of Fargo, FX's small screen riff on the Coen Brothers' Oscar-winning 1996 movie. Last year, showrunner Noah Hawley cast Chris Rock as the lead of season 4, and today, the network has finally announced the other key members of the cast.
Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall, Paddington), Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire), and more are joining the show this season, which takes place in Kansas City in the 1950s. Discover the rest of the newly-announced cast (including a new personal favorite!) and find out who they're all playing below.
Since Noah Hawley doesn't have a strict yearly schedule with Fargo and only makes a new season when a new idea strikes him, it's been a while since an episode of the show has aired – the third season concluded in June of 2017. But it's gearing up to shoot its fourth season this winter, and now we have a cast list and a breakdown of who these actors will play – and get a load of these character names.
Jack Huston as "Odis Weff"
Jason Schwartzman as "Josto Fadda"
Ben Whishaw as "Rabbi Milligan"
Jessie Buckley as "Orietta Mayflower"
Salvatore Esposito as "Gaetano Fadda"
Andrew Bird as "Thurman Smutney"
Jeremie Harris as "Leon Bittle"
Gaetano Bruno as "Constant Calamita"
Anji White as "Dibrell Smutney"
Francesco Acquaroli as "Ebal Violante"
E'myri Crutchfield as "Ethelrida Pearl Smutney"
Amber Midthunder (recurring) as "Swanee Capps"
While Schwartzman, Whishaw, and Huston are the most recognizable new additions, I'm most excited about Jessie Buckley being added to this cast. I'd never heard of the actress before this April, when I was super impressed with her performance in a country music drama called Wild Rose. But I was totally stunned to realize that she was also in HBO's Chernobyl, playing the wife of a fireman who was contaminated on the scene of a nuclear reactor disaster. The two performances are totally different from one another, and she's completely unrecognizable from one to the next, so I'm excited to have a new favorite up-and-coming, chameleonic performer to watch and it should be especially fun to see her enter the world of Fargo.
Here's the official description of the new season, which includes a brief history lesson and hints at how this season fits with the others:
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.
Chris 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.
Fargo season 4 does not have an official premiere date yet.