Ewan McGregor explains why he thought he may have ruined Fargo season 3 on his very first day of shooting. FX’s Fargo has attracted a lot of big-name acting talent during its four-season run. But McGregor arguably still stands as the biggest star ever to grace the show’s always-acclaimed cast.
It wasn’t enough of course for Star Wars prequel star McGregor to play just a single character when he arrived for Fargo season 3. So the actor took on the always-daunting challenge of playing two characters: Emmit and Ray Stussy, a pair of non-twin brothers whose lives (and hairlines) have gone in very different directions. As if that weren’t enough already, Fargo season 3 also set McGregor up with the task of giving each Stussy Brother a convincing Minnesota accent. Unfortunately many criticized McGregor for falling short when it came to mastering the tricky accent made famous by the Coen Brothers’ original Fargo movie and its Oscar-winning star Frances McDormand.
It actually turns out that McGregor himself wasn’t initially sure about his own Minnesota accent when he began work on Fargo season 3. Speaking to British GQ, the actor discussed the difficulties of nailing the accent and talked about how disappointed he felt with his work after his first day of shooting as Emmit Stussy. He said:
It's a very, very difficult accent to get as a British person, cause it's got so much Irish in it, and you can just find yourself doing a sort of bad Irish accent, which is unforgivable. So I worked with my dialect coach, Liz Himelstein here, but she wasn't able to come with me, and I found that that was quite difficult, not having her on set. But I slowly got it. The first thing I did was this speech to a room full of people as Emmit on day one, and … in my mouth it felt so wrong and alien and weird. And I felt for sure everybody in the room was going, ‘Oh, my God, what are we gonna do about this?’ But I've seen it back, and it seemed to me to sound like the rest of the stuff I did in the rest of the series, so it was just my ear becoming accustomed to what my mouth was doing, I guess.
Whether McGregor ultimately did a good job with his Minnesota accent in Fargo season 3 is of course up for debate. But overall the season met the approval of critics, and currently holds a strong 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And the Emmys for their part were certainly impressed with McGregor’s dual performance as the Stussy brothers, giving him a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie (he ultimately lost to Riz Ahmed for HBO’s The Night Of).
McGregor’s struggles with nailing the Minnesota accent may have caused him some concern early on in the process of shooting Fargo season 3. But the positive verdict of critics on the season overall proves that his worries about ruining the whole show were ultimately unfounded. Indeed Fargo went on to make season 4 and is set to return for season 5. When announced Fargo season 5 actors Jon Hamm, Juno Temple and Jennifer Jason Leigh get ready to dive into the show’s very distinctive world, perhaps they will hit up McGregor for some pointers on how to talk like they’re from Minnesota. His main bit of accent advice might be not to worry about it too much if they initially sound weird to themselves.
Source: British GQ/YouTube