Costume Designer Carol Case On Adding Dashes of Humor In the Darkness of ‘Fargo’

Noah Hawley’s Fargo tore through this year’s Primetime Emmy nominations with a snarky vengeance. Racking up an impressive 15 nominations, the fifth year proves that the perennial limited series contender isn’t going away any time soon, and it’s one of the few limited series that shows up almost every new year. My favorite nomination of this year’s haul, though, has to be for Carol Case’s mention in the Outstanding Contemporary Costumes For a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category for how she breaths an edgy comedy into the character development.

Fargo is known for how it weaves pitch black comedy into tales of violence and deception. For year five, Case worked closely in discussions with Hawley to identify specific palettes and pops of color.

“For this year, we had a lot of discussions, particularly about color,” Case says. “With the production designer, we spoke with Noah and the DP to land on a palette of the old European masters–that rich but very dark feeling of colors. For the costumes, we could add pops of colors like a yellow sweater to make it really clear. I love doing that kind of thing. We can go along with a certain color scheme and then you can find where you can bump it up. Noah and I spoke about Dot having an iconic piece so you could recognize her. There’s an awful lot of conversation going on between Noah and I–he’s a true genius. I think he probably has the entire show running though his head, and he knows what it looks like. It’s about being able to pick those little bits to make them work for the show.”

In the first episode, Dot’s bright yellow cardigan indicates to us her disposition even after, you know, she tases a few people at a school board meeting. It’s alludes to cheerfulness, sunshine, and a general brightness to the character. For some, it might seem like a simple color choice, but it immediately telegraphs her heart to the audience.

“There’s actually two different yellow sweaters,” she reveals. “Bad things happen to her house and she has to lose that piece, and there’s a second one that plays much more through the rest of the show. The second one was hand knit and designed, but the first one was a purchase.”

Jon Hamm’s Roy Tillman is first seen on horseback–the picture of an American ideal. Before you realize everything that Tillman is involved in, the visual of him is the most American thing you have ever seen, and that gets stripped away as we learn how violent and twisted he is. With his cowboy hat and warm sheepskin coat, there’s something very Ronald Reagan about him to me. As the year progresses, you might notice that his hat, coat, and gloves stay the same and only the shirts change. It’s almost as if the silhouette of him represents how stuck in his ways he is.

“When I first read the scripts, and we starting talking about him as a character, the one picture I took to Noah was a ’70s ad of the Marlboro Man,” Case says. “I knew that this was him, and Noah was on board. Jon [Hamm] bought into the whole thing, because I think so much of what we think about of that classic Old West look is how modern it is. There’s lots of people out there in the real world doing that, but it does sort of signify a specific outlook on life.”

One of the biggest omissions in Fargo‘s nomination count is the lack of notice for Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Lorraine. There is no one else in this Minnesota town that looks like Lorraine Lyon, and while her placid voice never brings attention to her clothes, they speak for themselves. Who else would go to a meeting in prison with that fine of a mink coat?

“What a fun character, and Jennifer [Jason Leigh] is very collaborative,” she says. “We had lots of conversations about it. Since she is supposed to be the richest person in Minnesota, we had to up our ante and just make her as elegant as possible in that conservative somewhat First Lady kind of way. She is the First Lady of Minnesota, but we went back to the older movie movie stars right out of the ’40s and ’50s to look for subtle glamour for her. Lorraine is ruthless, but we had to look for moments and places of softness which we wanted to bring out. The fact that she wore a mink coat into the prison tells you everything. It’s fun to think out of the box–she doesn’t care what anybody else thinks since it’s all about her. And what she perceives to be about her.”

Case’s submitted episode, “Insolubilia,” has some creative twists in store. As Joe Keery’s Gator and his crew invade Dot and Wayne’s home, they don masks from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. They are graphic and fun but carry a certain spookiness to them. They are a great representation of how this series can make you chuckle but also carry a sense of uneasiness.

“The props department and I worked really closely for that,” Case says. “We had to make some adjustments to make them wearable for the actors. A hat was setting off a trick too soon, so we had to adjust some things where they could see out of them. It felt like, sometimes, that it was two steps forward and one step back, but we worked together to get there. The idea I had was that they picked up these masks where they think they are set, but they had to put the outfits ready themselves. What do you do when you work on a ranch, and you have to look the part? They are such diverse characters that it helps with the comedy of it all in the mere fact that they’re falling down the stairs. They are such a disaster. I like that it sits in the middle of the year.”

The more I pored over the details of Case’s work, the more things I wanted to snag for myself for my closet. Dave Foley’s Danish has a fetching eyepatch all year, and I could see myself suiting up with his necktie with tiny American flags on them. Case has some ideas of her own…

“I really like that sweater, but it’s not my color,” she admits. “Maybe a sheepskin coat? The guys who made it were ever so talented. Although, I could give the mink a try…”

Fargo is streaming now on Hulu.