Ted Danson on FARGO Season 2: ‘All Hell is Breaking Loose’

Ted Danson has become one of the busiest men on TV, as he appeared in the CSI series finale TV movie, moved over to the crime drama’s latest spinoff, CSI: CYBER, and has a starring role on FX’s FARGO.

“Now, for something completely different, which is what an actor loves; [FARGO] was very different than CSI,” Danson said on FARGO’s Calgary set this spring, before he made the transition from CSI to CSI: CYBER. “The writing is just scrumptious. It’s a great part, a great group of people.”

Danson acknowledged he had his own doubts about adapting the 1996 FARGO film into a TV series before he watched the Noah Hawley created series.

“I watched the first season, and was like, ‘Wow,'” he recalled. “What I thought was going to be, ‘Why do a TV show when you have the movie?’ was swept away after about 20 minutes. This is why you do it — there’s more to be told, and it’s delicious and wonderful.”

So when he was approached about joining the ’70s-set second season as Sheriff Hank Larsson — the father-in-law of Lou Solverson (played in season 2 by Patrick Wilson; an older version of Lou was portrayed by Keith Carradine in the first season) — Danson jumped at the chance.

“I think when you bump into writers and directors who have a passionate desire to say [their story], they’re very authentic, and very good, and very creative, you just want to be a part of it,” he said. “So grab it when it comes around.”

It helped that Hank is a complicated fellow.

“He’s a World War II vet. He’s [now] a county sheriff,” Danson previewed. “He’s a little saddened to see what’s going on in the world. When he got back from his war, there was like one murder in six years in his county. And now his son-in-law, who is a Vietnam vet comes back from his war, and he’s a state trooper, and all hell is breaking loose. The moral fiber seems to be deteriorating. There’s savagery and evil that didn’t seem to exist [back in the day].”

“I love the sadness,” he continued. “He’s a grandfather. He cares very much for his granddaughter[, Molly]. He’s a father whose daughter is sick…he lost his wife a year ago, suddenly. And then he’s surrounded by all hell breaking loose. And yet there’s this wonderful — he’s a little whimsical in the way he talks. But he’s a very earnest, and, he hopes, a very well-intended man.”

As for that hell breaking loose, “we have two people who are not very bright at the center of all this mayhem, played by Kirsten [Dunst] and Jesse [Plemons],” Danson teased. “They set off a chain of events and [react] in the stupidest way possible that then brings these two factions into town: the local crime syndicate family, and the Kansas city mob….they blame each other [for what went down] and there’s a turf war.”

Naturally, that will cause complications for the law enforcement.

“We’re in the middle of that, trying to protect Kristen and Jesse’s characters [Peggy and Ed] and also keep this violence at arm’s length,” Danson said.

And though there is stress in the family and mayhem going on in town, the Hank and Lou partnership should survive.

“I think they’ve got each other’s backs, they trust each other to show up,” Danson said. “I think they’re great partners. [Hank] thinks [Lou] keeps his feelings too much to himself, that’s my fatherly advice, but he’s a really good trooper. He’s very heroic, our state trooper.”

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FARGO season 2 premieres tonight at 10 PM on FX.

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