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Photo: Frank W Ockenfels III/FX
Warning: Spoilers ahead for “Blankets,” episode eight of the fifth season of Fargo.
When interviewing an actor with all-timers like The Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio on his résumé, it’s hard not to gush. When I tell Dave Foley this, he laughs. “Oh, gush away!”
On this season of the FX crime-anthology series Fargo, Foley has helped create a new character to gush about in Danish Graves, the dapper and mysterious majordomo for ferocious billionaire Lorraine Lyon, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. With custom-made suits, a shock of naturally white hair that’s still surprising on Foley’s perpetually youthful face, and a bone-colored eyepatch to match, Danish was one of 2023’s most striking screen presences.
“Was” is the operative word there, sadly. This week on Fargo, Danish Graves went to the grave himself, courtesy of a pair of bullets from Jon Hamm’s far-right-wing psychopath Sheriff Roy Tillman. A character who lives his life in service to robber barons can be hard to understand, but Foley feels he knows what was going through Danish’s mind right until the end.
The suits, the mustache, the eye patch that matches his white hair — Danish Graves has such a distinctive and intriguing look. Did that evolve, or was all of that established from the start?
Well, the white hair was there. I’ve been growing that for years. But the eye patch was in the script. Beyond that, it was a question of showing up in Calgary and talking to Noah Hawley. At the time, I’d let my beard grow, and he decided he wanted just a mustache.
The rest of it was just the wardrobe department picking beautiful clothes — which I enjoyed. Oh, I should have bought them, now that I think about it! It’s all tailored to me beautifully. None of my old clothes fit me anymore.
I usually expect a more effervescent screen presence from you, and Danish is so reserved. How naturally did that come to you? Was it a matter of putting on that wardrobe and that eyepatch?
The eyepatch definitely does a lot of the work. It changes the way your face works. You’re reacting with one eye — that’s all you get. And it also triggers a lot of people’s preconceptions about people that have eyepatches, I guess.
Doing sketch work, putting on a wig and doing more heavy character work, you can definitely fall into it. On Kids in the Hall, I gave 80 percent of the credit to our makeup and hair people, Geri Wraith and Judi Cooper-Sealy. They created the characters more than we did.
But yeah, this is definitely the eyepatch. Also, Noah’s writing is so precise that there’s not a lot of confusion. Sometimes you read a character and there’s just nothing there to grasp on to, but with Noah’s stuff, you get a real sense of who the character is. I actually wasn’t sure if Noah liked what I was doing, because I’ve never worked with him before, and he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks in that we’re having dinner and Noah said, “You’re the one actor I never felt like I had to give you any notes.”
So you were sitting there on tenterhooks that whole time, like, Jesus, I hope I’m not screwing this up?
Well, yeah, because I loved the show! When they offered me the job, I was going, “Oh my God, I really hope I don’t ruin this show that I love so much!” [Laughs.]
Before I watched Fargo this season, I watched The Fall of the House of Usher, and—
Me too! Mark Hamill’s a friend of mine, and I got home from Fargo and watched it: Oh my God, Mark’s playing the same character as me! [Laughs.]
I think of your character and his character like Cordell from Hannibal, or even Renfield from Dracula: There’s some rich person who’s a piece of shit, and they have the lawyer-slash-fixer who handles their business.
It even goes back to The Godfather, the consigliere, Robert Duvall’s character.
What motivates these guys?
For Danish, I know it’s belonging. He’s a person who has nothing in his life, really, except this job, this powerful woman and her family. They’re Danish’s only semblance of having a place to be. He admires Lorraine’s ruthlessness, so it’s aspirational — he wants to be more like her — but it’s also just that feeling of having a family, as twisted as it is in that circumstance.
Danish falls victim to one of the central schisms of this season, which is the split on the political right wing between the true believers, like Roy Tillman, and the rich people, like Lorraine, who think they’re just using the true believers to keep their taxes low. Danish thinks he knows which side is really in charge, but Roy is the man with the gun, and he thinks otherwise.
You definitely have a sense with Jennifer’s character, Lorraine, that there’s still humanity in her. She cares about her family, and wants to protect them, so it’s at least as far as that. Obviously she’s willing to destroy other people’s lives in service of that goal without any real compunction.
But then you have Jon’s character, who believes he’s empowered by God, and therefore infallible. And can commit murders, randomly, constantly! He believes that if a man’s intentions are pure, everything he does is right, which is a much more dangerous mindset. It’s a psychopathy: You are incapable of feeling empathy, feeling any guilt or remorse for any of your actions, no matter how heinous, because you know, for a fact, you’re right in everything you do.
It reminded me of this fascinating little moment earlier in the season, where Danish is trying to leave Lorraine’s compound, but one of the security guards he himself hired won’t let him leave until he shows ID. It doesn’t make any sense, but the guard has the gun, so he makes the rules.
The power Danish thinks he has is illusory. All his power stems from Lorraine, he doesn’t have any power that’s vested in him, but he thinks he does. When the guard blocks him, it’s a little taste of what’s coming with Sheriff Roy.
When he sees Roy’s gun, in my mind, Danish is just disbelieving, because usually people are afraid of him. He’s like, “No, people are afraid of me! This isn’t gonna happen! He’s not gonna do this.” Right up until the moments the shots are fired, he still believes he has a fearsome presence.
Danish’s disbelief is so convincing that for a minute I didn’t believe it either. Roy pulls out his gun and I’m just like, Hmmm, what’s he getting at here?
[Laughs.] Then the misdirection worked! Good!
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