Conference Call Interview With Billy Bob Thornton On Fargo

You could say that Malvo is as sinister as he is mysterious. You don’t know where he came from; you don’t know what he did before. Can you talk about your approach in playing a guy like that and what his wants are? Can you give him a backstory and what do you think makes him tick?

Billy Bob Thornton: I think it’s probably the only character I’ve ever played, frankly, that has no backstory. So I chose to not think about that because Malvo, he’s an animal, and animals are eating machines. I thought if I come up with a back story and it’s like his father locked him in a shed when he was little or something, that might cause too much emotion for the character. It might give me too many reasons to do things and I didn’t want to do that, so it’s the first time I’ve ever not had a back story in my head or otherwise.

Malvo is all about he has a job to do and whatever he has to do to do it, that’s what he does and he has supreme confidence. He doesn’t think about failure and he’s not afraid of anything. I was afraid that a backstory might mess with that a little bit.

Were you satisfied with the ending of the finale and the end of the story arc for Malvo? 

Billy Bob Thornton: I think people will be very satisfied. I think Noah wrote a terrific ten-hour movie. It really has a beginning, a middle, and an end and that was one of the things that appealed to me about it. It’s just very well thought-out and I was very happy with it.

When you read it, were you surprised by the ending? Was it something you saw coming? Or was it completely out of left field for you?

Billy Bob Thornton: We kind of have known all along that I’m the devil in it and it’s kind of the way Hitchcock did things. He always thought it was scarier when you knew from the opening frame that’s the bad guy; that way the audience is afraid every time he’s around, so it’s not like the butler did it or something like that. I’ll just say it’s a very well thought-out series and very well-rounded and I think each character does have an arc and an A, B, and C.

There’s been lots of chatter about a second season. Would you like to see that even if you weren’t necessarily involved? Would you like to see this tone continue on for another series of episodes?

Billy Bob Thornton: Oh sure. As an audience member I’d love to see it. Our particular ten hours was designed as one story, so it does have a beginning, middle and an end. And if they did do another one, it would be a new story with some new characters and that kind of thing, but absolutely I would love to see it.

I’ve really enjoyed watching it frankly, and it’s kind of hard to watch things you’re in normally. But this was pretty easy to watch because after you’ve done ten episodes of something, you can’t really remember everything that you’ve already done, so it’s been very fresh for me.

As a fan of the series, we fell in love with the Fargo characters and as critics we often use the term chemistry or say things like, “Brilliant performance! Billy Bob Thornton plays his most complex character yet.” I’m wondering in your opinion as an actor are words and terms like those to describe performances overused, or do you actually feel a sense of something going on while you’re filming it compared to maybe something else you may have filmed?

Billy Bob Thornton: I think you generally get a sense when you’re filming something if you’re doing a good job or if the thing is good. I think you do get a sense of that. What you don’t get a sense of is how people are going to react to it. So in other words, I’ve done things before that I thought were okay and people think they’re amazing. And I’ve done things that I thought were amazing and people don’t get it. So you don’t always know how people are going to react to it. But I think you do get a pretty good sense of if you’ve done your job and if it’s got that vibe.

This show in particular really felt like we were on, so yes, we could tell. It was, I don’t want to say easy, but I think the writing was so good and it’s based on such a classic thing and that tone had already been set by the Coen brothers. We all had a groove to fall into, so yes, I think we really felt we were up to something.

In terms of what people use in the press, all the words and compliments and everything, one of the ones that bothers me is when they always say something is award-worthy, because that sounds like they’re saying other people’s stuff wasn’t worthy. It’s kind of—I don’t know, sounds a little dehumanizing or something like that. I think in terms of when people are picked out for awards and they start talking, that depends on the machine behind you. You can make a movie for $2 million that doesn’t get a distributor, so nobody sees it. Those don’t have a chance and maybe they’re just as good as the one that had a machine behind it and got all the right things lined up, all the right press lined up or whatever.

I guess the most you can hope for is that you get to be in good quality projects and know that you did your job and then after that, you decide to leave it up to fate or whatever and just see what happens. This one felt good during the process.