The first of several on set interviews for season 3 of FX’s Fargo has arrived via The Observer. While you can read the full interview by using the link above, this first interview is with the cast. Playing the parolee girlfriend Nikki Swango of Ewan’s character Ray Stussy, Mary said this to them:
When Fargo‘s third season was still in the planning stages Noah Hawley described Nikki Swango, according Ms. Kennedy, as “the only Fargo character that gets to be really, really hot,” a sentiment echoed by Costume Designer Carol Case. “With Nikki, the sky is the limit,” Case says. Compared, of course, to Fargo‘s usual wardrobe palette of brown matched with slightly darker brown.
Which makes it all the stranger that Nikki ends up with the constantly put-upon Ray Stussy. “When [Noah] sent me the first script, he made it clear that Nikki’s love for Ray was real, which was very important,” Winstead tells me, sitting in an icebox-esque trailer in-between shooting scenes.
“In reading it, you could have played it totally differently,” she continued. “I could have read it and played it as she was manipulating him to gain something. Or she will be with him with a little bit then leave him. Because really, from the first episode, just on the page it’s hard to know where it’s going. You don’t know. I could have easily have thought she was going to become some sort of really awful character. But knowing that little kernel, knowing that I could believe in that relationship allowed it to really blossom into something really, really fun.”
Mary also revealed that she and Ewan only took two one-hour lessons to learn about the world of competitive bridge playing and only has basic knowledge of the game.
“I think it mainly speaks to her personality,” she says. “She is constantly strategizing, and she never stops planning and thinking about what her next move is. Trying to be one step ahead of whoever she’s against. Because she’s sort of one of those people that always needs to have an enemy so that she can win.”
Speaking with The A.V. Club about the competitive bridge playing, Mary said “It was so much more difficult than I think we had imagined, so going to see the tournament and seeing how people behave and interact with one another was something that we thought, ‘Okay, we can at least act this; We don’t actually have to know how all the numbers and stuff are adding up.”