FX's Fargo is perhaps the most surprising movie-to-TV adaptation in the last decade. One wouldn't expect the Coen Brothers' masterful Oscar-winning film to lend itself to a television adaptation, but creator Noah Hawley managed to open up the world of the 1996 film, allowing the original story to act as a stepping stone for sordid tales of Midwestern idiosyncrasy and corruption in his acclaimed crime anthology series.
The show, which won an Emmy for Best Miniseries in 2014 (before the "limited series" craze took off), has seen plenty of A-list film actors bring their talents to the small screen, with Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Kirsten Dunst, Ewan McGregor, and Carrie Coon all delivering incredible performances as complicated characters who find themselves on either side of the law. And today FX announced its latest starry hire for its upcoming fourth season: Chris Rock.
The network made the announcement today during the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour. "I'm a fan of Fargo and can't wait to work with Noah," Rock said in a statement about his casting on the new season.
The remaining cast is yet to be announced, but a press release from FX did detail the plot of the upcoming fourth season, which will be set in Kansas City in 1950:
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.
Expect Chris Rock to be gunning for an Emmy for his performance. The new season will premiere in 2019.
Tyler Coates is the Senior Culture Editor at Esquire.com. He lives in Los Angeles.
