“Fargo” was one of the biggest surprises on TV this year. No one predicted that it would be good. It was supposedly a lesser version of the 1996 Fargo movie by the Coen brothers.
Against all odds, “Fargo” wasn’t just good, it was great. Noah Hawley created a show that had recognizable elements from the Coens, but it also felt like a fully realized original series.
Fox recently released the first season of “Fargo” on DVD and Blu-ray. To celebrate that release, Colin Hanks was the guest of honor at a recent L.A. Kings game in Los Angeles. Hanks played Gus, a hapless but well intentioned policeman on “Fargo” who eventually achieved his dream of becoming a mailman.
Over the course of the season, Gus actually became more and more important and Hanks delivered a very memorable performance as an everyman hero. During the Kings game, CraveOnline had a chance to speak with Hanks one-on-one as he offered his thoughts on the first season of “Fargo” and looked back at two of his prior gigs on “The Good Guys” and “Dexter.”
CraveOnline: Colin, the first thing that I saw you in was “The Good Guys,” your ’80s cop meets good cop show on Fox from a few years back. I wish that had kept going.
Colin Hanks: Oh man, I do too. I had a lot of fun on that show. Bradley Whitford made me laugh more than almost any human being on Earth. I absolutely loved making that show. I wish we had a little more time to make it. But these things live on forever nowadays and people still find the show on Netflix.
Is it on Netflix?
Oh yeah.
You know, I predicted that RonReaco Lee would be a star when “The Good Guys” was on the air. I’m still waiting for him to prove me right.
He’s got that new show on STARZ [“Survivor’s Remorse”] which he is very good [in]. RonReaco is an incredibly talented individual, so it’s probably going to happen sooner rather than later.
Your next really big role on TV was your season long arc on “Dexter.” What made the producers say “Colin Hanks, Serial Killer!”
I think it was the fact that there was conflict within Travis that he was unaware of and I think they were trying to do something different. That was one of those characters who didn’t quite fit the mold of the previous sort of baddies that they had. Travis was a guy that obviously had some very serious mental health issues.
You could say the same thing about any of the serial killers on that show, but clearly he was delusional. I think it was just a way of making him a little sympathetic as opposed to out and out bad.
I was always curious. At what point did they let you in on the twist that Edward James Olmos’ character was not real?
They told me about the day before that script was handed out to the cast and crew. So I went through a majority of the season not knowing… which is a great little acting exercise. It shows that you don’t really need to know much. [laughs]
For “Fargo,” did you know going in that Gus would be so important in the series? Because his part in the pilot episode was really small.
Yeah, Noah [Hawley] told me “Look, the way that we’re telling these stories are different.” In your average pilot, you’ve got to introduce all of your main characters within the first five minutes. But he said that they weren’t telling this particular story that way. That it was going to be much more realistic and natural and much more like a ten hour film.
So it wasn’t necessarily about everything that you could fit into one hour, but how best to tell a story over time. And just that decision alone I found to be really, incredibly exciting. And whatever he wanted to do after that I was all for. But he warned me that there was going to be a whole lot more of me in the show.
What I loved about Gus is that he was allowed be cowardly at times. That definitely made him feel more human to me. He felt more real than an uberhero.
Yeah. It makes him more three dimensional. That was the thing that I loved about Gus, it was how self aware that he was. He was aware that he had made this horrible mistake and he spent the rest of his time trying to fix and to right that wrong. So here you have a character who is incredibly aware of his shortcomings and that’s his cross to bear. That’s the weight on his shoulders. That kind of stuff… you don’t see that kind of depth in characters often. That was actually one of the things that really drew me to him.
I’ve been thinking a lot about “Fargo.” It seems to me that Malvo and Lester were the protagonists, and the villains. But that makes Molly and Gus the antagonists, and the heroes.
Well yeah… heh. Trying to break down the show like that with those sort of rules makes it kind difficult. I always find that — kind of like those Coen brothers films — they’re like slices of actual life. You can’t just break it down into your sort into movie tropes.
A lot of people like to call Gus a hero, but I didn’t necessarily think of him that way. I just saw him as a guy who was trying to do the right thing and trying to right the wrong that he had done. If that makes him a hero, sure I guess. But I don’t really think that heroes come as super studly hunks. They sort of look like Gus.
Do you have a favorite Gus moment from the first season?
The one that always stuck out for me was him talking on the walkie-talkie about having to cover for the guy and then cracking a joke and thinking that he’s being funny, and finding out that the man he’s cracking a joke about does actually have cancer. Not a funny topic by any means, but just the fact that the one time that Gus tried to crack a joke and it really didn’t work out. That scene always made me laugh for some reason.
The courtship of Gus and Molly was very charming. Did they tell you and Allison Tolman ahead of time that you were going to be THE couple of the series?
No, they didn’t really say. I knew that their paths were going to cross and I knew that they were going to be working together. I didn’t really know how that was going to work out or anything like that. Again, they sort of gave me a very, very rough map as to what was going to happen and then all of the rest of the stuff would be filled in when I got the scripts.
That night when the script would come would tend to be pretty exciting. Allison and I would text each other afterwards saying “God, I can’t believe you’re gonna shoot me!” Things like that.
I was curious about that. It’s an unusual stage of the courtship.
Yeah! Yeah, everything about “Fargo” is pretty unusual.
How did you feel about the time jump?
I thought it was hilarious! I thought it was great. Look, anyone who was complaining that they wanted to see more of Gus and Molly’s courtship… that was gonna be long and pretty boring to see! [laughs] To be quite honest. But I thought it was a great idea. Obviously, it made me laugh when I saw it. I thought it was very well shot and very well done. I thought that it was a really interesting twist to make the end of the season unique.
One of the things that bugged me about the finale is that Gus is a mailman. Were there no legal repercussions for the mailman killing a man?!
Well, he is a former cop. There is that. And obviously, there is a connection there. So I’m sure he probably got a bit of a stern talking to, but at the end of the day, they are catching a very, very bad man. I’m sure within the brotherhood of policemen, I’m sure that Gus found himself being accepted by the cops all of a sudden. At that stage, I imagine that they probably weren’t too mean with him.
Gus and Molly are off the stage for the next season of “Fargo.” But your characters are still alive, so there’s still the possibility that you could come back. Would you be up for that?
Oh yeah, I’d be up for it if they’d have me. Yes, of course. But as with all things in the “Fargo” television program, I can neither confirm nor deny anything… because I don’t know anything! So, we’ll wait and see.
What’s next for you?
I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my Tower Records documentary and I’ll be going out to a bunch of film festivals with that. I just had a little bit of a House Bunny reunion with Anna Faris on the show “Mom.” So I’m just trying to come up with things to do between Kings games.
Yeah, they’ve got us out here at the L.A. Kings game for this press event. I assume that you’re a big Kings fan. How many years?
Since 1987.
Wow. You’ve even got it memorized!
Yeah!
