Juno Temple on Ending Fargo and Not Moving on Over Ted Lasso

There’s not much in common between Minnesota housewife Dorothy “Dot” Lyon and British model-turned-marketing executive Keeley Jones, but Juno Temple has a theory about the two women. And she should know, since she played Dot on “Fargo” and Keeley on “Ted Lasso” and earned Emmy nominations for both.

“I think Dot and Keeley would probably be great friends,” the London-born actress said. “They’re both strong, little women and they have a lot of surprising elements.”

The same could be said for Temple herself, a former child actress and the daughter of director Julien Temple, who worked for nearly 15 years before receiving BAFTA’s Rising Star Award in 2013. Temple has racked up a slew of accolades over the past four years: three Emmy nominations for “Ted Lasso” and one for “Fargo,” four SAG Award nominations and a win for her role in “Ted Lasso,” and a Critics Choice Award nomination for “The Offer.”

Though she was once best known for such indies as “Killer Joe” and “Kaboom” as well as Martin Scorsese’s series “Vinyl,” she’s now come to prominence for her captivating comedic talents as Keeley, then her deceptively steely spunk on “Fargo,” slipping into “The Offer” as a production assistant on “The Godfather” between seasons of “Lasso.”

And if you’re thinking the jump from the final season of 2023 as Keeley to the 2024 transformation of Dot might have been a case of creative whiplash, you’d be right. “I did them back-to-back,” she said with a smile. “I finished Ted Lasso (in London) on Friday, and I had Saturday and Sunday to pack. I traveled Sunday afternoon and evening, landed in Calgary on Monday, and was supposed to do a camera rehearsal on Wednesday. But I got really sick, so I ended up on camera on Friday. It was pretty crazy.”

She laughed. “But oddly, I would say it was kind of a blessing because when I finished the third season of Ted Lasso, I didn’t have time to grieve for Keeley. There was this urgent need to fill Dot’s shoes, which meant Keeley got a “See you later” instead of a full-on “Oh my God, is this the end?”

The two characters had already been coexisting for some time in Temple’s household, where she attempted Dot’s Minnesota accent (notoriously difficult to learn but necessary) between Keeley’s Essex accent (an East London variant of the Cockney accent) and her own West London accent.

“When you start learning the Minnesota accent, you really wonder if you’ll ever be able to do it,” she said. “But that accent is a huge part of the comedic element of ‘Fargo.’ You have to understand that the story is so dark that a lot of the humor has to come from the nice Minnesota accent, the genuine kindness with which people respond to things.”

In Dot’s case, the accent is also misleading. In the early episodes, she seems like a pretty normal housewife who just happens to have some weirdly evolved survival skills. She’s a fierce mother, you might say — and it’s only later that we learn the history of abuse that gave her those survival skills.

Temple herself also didn’t know the full story of her character when she met with creator Noah Hawley and agreed to star in Season 5 of the show, which she credited as being a “decade of class acting” with stars including Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Ewan McGregor, Carrie Coon, Chris Rock and Jessie Buckley.

“I was sent the first three episodes, and then I had long conversations with Noah about where the storyline could potentially go,” she said. For her, those conversations were necessary: ​​“A huge part of the joy of this show for me was making sure that the early episodes, where you don’t know that much about her, made a lot of sense by the time you get to the end.

“Playing a woman who has survived what she has survived and comes out of it with a huge heart but with a ferocious ability to survive and get through situations — that was really interesting to weave into the beginning of the show. And as an actress, it was like a treasure chest — working through the rhythms of her being in survival mode and being this incredible, sloppy ninja warrior and also a caretaker.”

She laughed at the thought of becoming an action hero. “None of it was ‘John ​​Wick,’ which was good,” she said. “But I can be pretty feisty, so I felt like I couldn’t lose.”

During filming, she said, she filled her scripts with annotations for all the different states Dot goes through. “It was crazy, with me color-coding the different shots—when this guard is down, this guard is up, things like that. It was almost like a mathematical performance.”

But playing a woman who had been through years of trauma also took its toll on her. “I’m not a method actress, but you can’t help but let the character get under your skin when you’re living with her,” she said. “There were days when I’d go home and feel really fragile, but at the same time I knew I could talk about it with the people I was working with. I didn’t have to be stoic all the time, you know?”

“Fargo” plunges deep into darkness in its final few episodes, filled with murder, torture, mutilation and a sequence in which Dot is kidnapped, chained and beaten by her cruel ex-husband. But it also finds a surprising note of gratitude at the end of the final episode, in which Dot meets the ageless figure who has relentlessly haunted her for most of the series. (Think of Javier Bardem’s ruthless killer in the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men.”) (if he had centuries to hone his killing skills.)

The climax is gentle, involving a family dinner and what she calls a “forgiveness cookie.”

“We were all really stunned by the simple, quiet, deeply beautiful way it ended,” she said. “The genius of Fargo is that when you think someone is completely unforgivable, they turn out to be the most human element of the story. It was thrilling and quite humbling to be a part of that.”

Of course, the one-two punch of “Ted Lasso” and “Fargo,” with “The Offer” thrown in, sets the bar very high for the actress, who just turned 35. She has a role in the upcoming MCU film “Venom: The Last Dance,” in which she plays a scientist who tracks Tom Hardy’s titular character, as well as a role in Gore Verbinski’s sci-fi film “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” opposite Sam Rockwell and Haley Lu Richardson, and a role in Doug Liman’s “Everest,” about the first man to climb the world’s highest mountain.

“What am I looking for?” she asked. “I’m looking for people who want to be creative together and are up for the challenge. There’s a whole new world of possibilities that I’m learning about by playing these more mature women. It’s exciting, but it’s also scary. I’ve been lucky to have these characters who never cease to surprise me, and I want to keep playing complex women.”

“The older I get, the more it’s about allowing myself to be whole and present in the moment, to respond to these amazing people who are giving you things. It’s really, really powerful.”

This story first appeared in TheWrap’s awards issue Down to the Wire: Drama. Read more from the issue here.