If you, like me, are from the MTV generation, the name of Juno Temple’s father, Julien, may well ring a bell with you. From the early days of Music Television and well into the modern day, Julien has proven himself to be a groundbreaking presence in music video, narrative film (please find and watch his far too unsung British musical Absolute Beginners, and documentary (see his great documentary Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten).
While it’s not always the case, it holds true with his gifted daughter Juno, that the distance from the apple to the tree is almost non-existent. Over and over since her proper debut in the Cate Blanchett / Judi Dench film Notes on a Scandal, Juno has proven to be a dynamic and flexible performer–capable of darkness, light, and all the shades in-between. It’s easy to think that Juno hit a career high with her work in Ted Lasso, but in season 5 of Fargo, as Dot, whose slender shoulders carry the bulk of the weight of the show, Juno proves herself more than up to a task, resulting in one of the more remarkable performances of this Emmy year, or any previous year for that matter.
Here is our conversation:
Awards Daily: I hope this doesn’t come off as too cute, but it’s a long way from Dottie in Killer Joe to Dot in Fargo.
Juno Temple: That’s so true. I thought about that. Haven’t I played a Dot before? Oh yea, Dottie! Dot came into my life and it took me a minute and I was like that’s why, that’s exactly it. But both have changed my life dramatically.
Awards Daily: William Friedkin and Noah Hawley are career difference makers, I would assume.
Juno Temple: I couldn’t agree more. And people that inspire you to do great things and give you characters that you will forever be grateful for.
Awards Daily: There are two particular challenges that I thought about while watching you playing Dot. The first one is getting the accent right, because you want to honor the regionalism, but you also don’t want to be cartoonish. Obviously, you’re British, so Minnesota is quite far from your natural accent. How was it to try to master the accent?
Juno Temple: Yes, it was, I’m not going to lie, it felt really alien initially. One of my best friends, who’s also an actress, her name’s Emily Fernandez, she’s actually from Minnesota. I was still filming Ted Lasso, when I started preparing for Dot, because it was a quick turnaround between the two, I had about three days. I started learning the accent with the guardian angel Liz Himelstein, the most incredible dialect coach of all time. She worked on the movie Fargo and also each series installment before, so I was in really good hands, but it was an accent that, until it clicks in your brain, you just think I’m never going to be able to do this. This is never going to work. I’m never going to wrap my head around it. I just can’t do it. And then suddenly it will click and then you don’t want to stop doing it. Then you have the most fun with it.
I got this great cheat sheet that Liz gave me with these little check in phrases, I remember one being (Juno speaking in a pitch-perfect rural Minnesota accent) “Barb’s large apartment.” So there were all these different little phrases like that. I think a huge part of nailing down that accent is actually that it takes quite a lot for it to become comical. In the movie, Liz told me this, when everyone was working on their Minnesota accents, there is a sequence (in the film version) where there are two young women prostitutes, and the way they speak, they are the only two people truly from Bear Lake, Minnesota in the whole movie and their accents are real. When you watch that little snippet, you realize you can have a lot of fun with the accent, because it actually takes a lot for it to become comical. Even though, obviously, it is a huge part of what brings the dark comedy to life in every chapter of Fargo.
Awards Daily: The other challenge that came to my mind was that Dot emanates this sweetness and this kindness, but she’s also, as the sin-eater would call her, “a tiger.” Some of it’s just industriousness. I don’t think Dot, when she’s defending herself, has got a cruel bone in her, but she has to do some violent things at times to defend herself. Going from that person who can flip a switch like that, how did you manage to do so and make the character consistent and believable?
Juno Temple: They were a huge part of what I found to be this integral meandering part of Dot, in fact. I think both sides of her, and (show creator) Noah Hawley and I had a lot of fun talking about this too, of finding a bit of nurture in moments where she was being feral and a survivalist and more violent, and then also in these moments of being fully nurturing, seeing the fire of the tiger, and actually almost having both parts of her being present at all times, but choosing when they pop up and when they don’t. I think a really good example of it is in the first episode at the gas station with Officer Witt Farr (played by Lamorne Morris) with the beat with the tourniquet. It’s a beat that wasn’t initially in the script. And then it felt like there had to be this moment of her motherly nurture. It’s just that both sides of her are present at all times, and both sides of her are what make her the woman that she is when we meet her.
Obviously, she’s a mother and her family matters more to her than anything else in the world and she will do anything to keep them safe and prevent her past from catching up with her. But when it comes down to it, by the time you’ve watched all of this installment and you get to the very ending and you see how the show comes to a close, ultimately, her heart lies with being able to forgive. I think every time we’ve seen these violent acts from her, they are about having survived and protecting what she loves the most. But I think it was a really fun duality to figure out, this finding the moments of real kindness when things were scary and then these moments of a flicker of the danger that she can survive and get out of, when she’s being really nurturing. Dot’s DIY at home safety designs, things like that, I think make her a character that you are quite mesmerized by.
Awards Daily: The two leads of this season are you and Jon Hamm. Obviously there’s that direct connection of why he’s looking for you. But largely you circle each other throughout most of the show. Jon Hamm has a quintessential American presence, but he also has this ability to dip into a dark side which we’ve seen in Mad Men. Here, he was pitch black dark. What was it like when you did get to do those scenes with Jon? Because you have to come at it as if you already have this unseen history built into those moments.
Juno Temple: It was interesting because for the whole time of filming, we really didn’t cross paths at all. When I wasn’t working, he was, and vice versa, really. And then, when we do finally cross paths, it was at the end of episode 7 when he comes into the hospital. And I remember it being a moment that was so scary, but at the same time, obviously, we were filming something. I was all tied down to the bed, and I’d had this injury, and I just remember my breathing, and how much taller he was than me, and it was really impactful, because we really hadn’t seen each other. Then we go into the sequence that spans across the next three episodes and he was really scary. I think people don’t always think in the moment of how hard it must be to be playing the monster.
For him to go there and really inhabit someone like that without holding back, just doing it is what makes his performance so brilliant and brave and also was what made him scary to interact with. But at the same time, there was always a huge amount of respect for the people that he was working with, especially me. I felt very safe having to go to the places that were really dark, that we needed to go to, because he made it feel safe. I felt a lot smaller than him, and he felt so big and tall, and like you said, very quintessentially American. Dot has been wanting to disappear into a space often and not necessarily be noticed by everybody and to suddenly have somebody that takes up so much space be the person paying attention to you was a really interesting thing to play with too. I was really grateful for the bravery of his performance and also at the same time for him creating safe space.
Awards Daily: And then you have, playing your mother-in-law, the icon Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Juno Temple: I was so excited to work with her. Oh my God. I’d work with her on anything. I love her so much.
Awards Daily: I get it. Totally. And she’s scary in her own way. She has this very sweet son played by David Rysdahl, who also plays your husband, that you have this wonderful relationship with. The mother and the son could not be more different.
Juno Temple: Honestly, he and Sienna, who plays Scotty (Dot’s daughter), were like a safe word for me. So when at the end of the show, I didn’t see them for a while, I felt quite discombobulated actually, because I really connected with them, and Jennifer too, who ultimately does become family at the end. I found it quite difficult as an adjustment, which was kind of brilliant, because it was like life imitating art. Their performances and their general existence are so beautiful and honest and open, and it felt really daunting without them at the end, which was good I suppose.
Awards Daily: Because their performances are so daunting towards your character, in very different ways, obviously, it’s a fascinating thing to see when Jennifer meets up with Jon for the last time, and discover that she’s the more powerful character.
Juno Temple: Her performance from the beginning to the end, I think has this incredible feline quality. It felt like she was always aware of stalking prey and was deciding whether or not you were going to be edible. It was really amazing. It was interesting for us to play too, because again, I really connected with her and we really got on, which meant that we got to have a lot of fun with the kind of combative element our characters had to begin with. It was that idea of two wild cats kind of playing together. It was like suddenly she’d found a new species of cat that she didn’t quite know how to read. It was really magical to play with that. The moment with the phone call when she finally calls Dot her daughter, she’d shot her side of the phone call and when it was played back to me, I hadn’t heard it before and so that reaction by me was actually quite genuine.
Awards Daily: It’s really important to talk about the final scene with you and Sam. I got to interview Sam before the nominations. I was so happy for Lamorne, but also disappointed for Sam.
Juno Temple: And Jennifer, too. I feel the same. I think everyone deserved a nod, but that’s why I’m really happy that the show got the nod (for Limited Series) because it’s such an ensemble cast. Sam is so brilliant in this chapter. A lot of these moments with him, like the beat in the graveyard under the windmill, that whole sequence where he says the tiger can come out now, we learned more about our characters than I thought was possible in that moment. Oh my God, there’s actually a real kindred spirit here. And also perhaps he kind of loved her. It was this incredible moment that we did not know until we shot it. And that came from Sam. So that last episode, I remember when we read it, we were all really moved by it. Then filming it, it just felt like the most kind of beautiful last supper, I guess.
Awards Daily: You just pointed out something that I hadn’t thought about, that was seeded throughout the show. He has this compulsion to follow through no matter how he feels about the act of doing so personally.
Juno Temple: It’s a debt that has to be paid.
Awards Daily: Exactly. And your character has this compulsion to protect not only herself but her family at all costs. So what the two of you are doing in that scene is almost like a dance. The tension rises and then it falls and it rises and it falls and you are never ever sure if it’s going to break into violence or not. Having interviewed Sam, he’s nothing like that guy. He’s actually quite delightful.
Juno Temple: Everything about him is different. He made up his own dialect with Liz, the dialect coach, for that. It was like a completely fabricated mishmash of things. He’s extraordinary.
Awards Daily: I’m from Kentucky originally, so biscuits were a really important part of my life growing up–it solves a lot of problems in family life when you can just hand somebody a biscuit, believe it or not. But when you’re doing that dance in the scene and the highs and the lows leading up to that final beautiful moment, how did you just manage the steps and the notes you were playing? It’s almost musical.
Juno Temple: It is almost musical. I think we rehearsed it in three different sections: in the living room, then in the kitchen, and then at the table. The big thing about the living room is obviously that’s the first initial moment of realizing that something dangerous is back again. But the truth of the matter is, and Sam and I talked about this a lot, we both know that we’re actually quite an even match. So if he decides to do something, you don’t know what I’m going to do back. I think the whole dance, from my perspective, was about not letting him get in the way of supper. Because we can do this. We can fucking go there if you need to, but I have to put my daughter to bed. It’s a school night, and she’s got to be fed. So you either join, or you come back later. And then, she has the support of her family.
Every time he tries to go in a direction and takes it a little too far, Scotty will ask him to join in, or he’ll be offered a beer. And so it felt like the musical rhythm from our standpoint was that we’re singing a certain tune, and he’s not allowed to change the words. It’s our song. I also think the fact that my husband and daughter want to know more about him and are asking him questions and aren’t initially frightened of him, even though Wayne (David Rysdahl) obviously understands this is not a great situation, it’s about almost killing with kindness and inviting people into your home. It doesn’t matter what their past is. It doesn’t matter where they came from. If they’re inside right now, they’re welcome. And no one has ever done that for a man like him before. So it felt like we were the family side of things that he doesn’t remember and it’s almost like jogging a memory.
