Trevor Smith has built up a resume of eclectic work as an art director, director, and production designer. He is a wildly imaginative storyteller who has just been nominated for an Emmy for his expansive production design on the current season of Fargo. The current season features a cast to die for with Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, and Jennifer Jason Leigh with a new spin on crime in the anthology’s fifth season, which some are calling one of its best.
Series creator Noah Hawley’s characters are made all the more authentic by their environments. Each set is as specific as the dialogue and personalities on-screen. Recently, Smith spoke with Immersive about crafting the new environments for Fargo.
[Note: This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
You were there at the beginning of Fargo as art director. Now, for season five, you’re the production designer. What was it like to return?
I bookended it, if you will. I was one of the art directors on season one when it first came to Calgary with Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman. I did that season and then I was off of the show frankly, until just timing in life until the fifth installation of the series. I had an opportunity to put my name back in the hat with that much more experience behind me through that decade and make a case for how important it was for me to sort of take the helm and give it another crack. And weirdly, close the circle because I think when this iteration started, there were some suggestions that it might’ve been the last because it had a real bookend quality where it’s almost coming back full circle to the beginning again where it’s another inversion or, let’s just call it, leaping off point from the original movie.
Tell us a little bit about working with Noah Hawley. He’s kind of the mastermind of this show. How did that collaboration evolve?
I think stating the obvious when you’re working with an artist of his caliber and a showrunner, who has so much insight into every nuance of the show, is a vital relationship to have and to hold and continue to cultivate. It’s a long journey on a series like this. Thankfully, I had a healthy amount of prep and Noah and I could rebuild those bonds and work a lot with Dana Gonzales, who is of course, the key cinematographer who sets the look of the show. He is also a producer and knows the show inside and out like Noah. So, the first thing was just defining what this fifth installment was going to look like, because I think it’s fair to say that the more that they, in particular, do new versions of Fargo in these sort of contained installments, they’re also continuing to flex and change as filmmakers over time too.
What were some influences on the current season?
We’re all inevitably influenced by the things we see and feel. So that was the biggest part of all was, what does this season want to feel like? Of course, we talk a lot about color, we talk a lot about design strategies. Noah loves a rule set. He loves for the audience to know quickly where they are from a character standpoint and creates some, no pun intended, sort of rules of the road around that. North Dakota and Roy Tillman’s universe has a look, and you know it right away when you’re in Minnesota, even if you’re not aware, you’re probably feeling it in terms of some of the decisions we’ve made.
Please tell us about the numerous Easter eggs that you’ve thrown in there.
I think it’s kind of a twofold Easter egg strategy, the original movie, I mean, The Lyon House. We literally had our first design pass was redrawing Jerry Lundegaard’s house. I had to rebuild it with my set designers shot by shot and started with Jerry’s house and then applied the installment five needs to that house, but stating the obvious, there are tons of direct echos like the sliding patio doors and the break-in, whereas in this case, rather than applying the hammer just realizes that things are unlocked, but it’s a lot of the same Dot with the knitting. And she was wearing a sweater that was the color of his sweater from the original movie. So, there were all sorts of cues and then the upstairs and the shower curtain, so many moments that were derivative echoes of the movie.
The other half of it is loaded with other seasons of Fargo, little drippings of ideas from that. For instance, there’s a painting in the hospital that’s an alien spacecraft that’s waffles. It looks like a UFO, but it’s a stack of waffles, and that’s very much a reference to season two. And then waffles, of course, just overall waffles and pancakes and breakfast is a bit of a thing. It’s endless.
I don’t know if you follow Reddit or anything like that. Was there anything that no one noticed?
There’s something throughout the series, prey and predators theme, and sometimes those dynamics change. The more you watch the film, I think if you put the lens of the animal kingdom in North American wildlife on your radar, you’d be thrilled to find how many things there are, whether they’re portraits of deer, loons on murals, the deer of course that we pull out within the hospital, which is maybe my favorite shot of the whole series where we start in this snowfall, deer and elk sort of situation.
We widen out to Dot and Lorraine, but there’s always this notion of prey and predator. And in the case of Roy Tillman, even like bison, he’s almost like an antiquated animal that’s extinct, much like some of his philosophies and worldviews. So that’s there for everybody that wants to look is a wealth of tribute to the animal kingdom.
And keeping with this vibe as a fellow Tim Burton fan, let’s talk for a moment about The Nightmare Before Christmas theme.
The show is building and crescendoing towards Halloween and all the stuff that happens at the Lyon House and The Nightmare Before Christmas sort of overlay that goes with that, which I just loved. I loved the characters with the masks, which again, when you look at them through a fresh set of eyes, they’re quite horrifying. The school play at the beginning, it’s there for those that are looking on the stage as a little version of the set, almost like a kid’s school play is stacked up on the side of the auditorium, stage on the windows of the upcoming production of The Nightmare Before Christmas by the high school students.
Can you talk a little bit about any sort of inspiration that you got from the paintings of Andrew Wyeth?
I think back to that sort of, let’s call it creative journey and setting the aesthetic for this installment, Andrew Wyeth, came up as a painter of note when we were talking. That is how we might sort of influence the color spectrum of the film and this sort of warm, toned, amber deep black, shadowy, pensive quality and nothingness too, always the appreciation of nothingness or singular worn wooden derelict elements.
And so, his paintings came up a lot when we started to drill in for the North Dakota, Roy Tillman universe. So we very much get into that palette that we’re talking about where the grasses are golden, the woods are all sun faded and sunburned, and the dirt itself, the soil, and the exposed rocks are very much warm rather than that granite of the rocky mountains.
I love the fact that you refer to the season as a film. I do feel like these seasons are like films.
I’m first and foremost a cinephile, our aspirations are always cinematic and all of our references are always cinematic. I think the beauty of Noah and the show as he manufactures it year by year is its containment and that it is, in this case, a 10-episode movie. I don’t treat it any differently. I think we see it that way. We sort of build an aesthetic universe that way. There are fewer edits even in violent sequences than I think a lot of what we might call TV these days fewer closeups and very much pinned down and controlled.
This season has been extraordinarily well-received. Lots of Emmy nominations, including yourself, congratulations. What’s the reaction to this been like for you?
I’m flattered to be in the Emmy conversation for me really and my team. I think the nomination is the victory. It’s just so wonderful to be a part of this sort of wave of excitement and cultural sort of acclaim for the show. I feel enormously privileged to be in the conversation with so many other great designers and shows, and just for some schmuck from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It’s just wonderful to have my toes sort of dipped into Hollywood a little bit, but I knew that going in that, with all due respect, Fargo is special. I think it has a special place in our hearts and minds. I was so fortunate to get the opportunity and to start to sort of paddle with Noah in the same boat.
Fargo Season 5 is now available to stream.
