Prior to The Leftovers, Carrie Coon was known within the Chicago theater community — she was nominated for a Tony for her performance as Honey in Steppenwolf’s production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf — but she was a new presence for the culture-consuming public at large when the series aired. Her performance as Nora Durst — wife and mother of a whole family of “departed” individuals — on the most inventively bleak show on television is wrenching, and her ability to simultaneously portray frailty and strength in the consistent crisis of the Leftovers has made the emotional weight of her performance unshakeable. This is all to say that it’s a damn exciting thing that she’ll now, as TVLine reports, have another — and perhaps somewhat lighter — starring role on another of cable TV’s more inventive series.
She’ll be joining Ewan McGregor (whose casting was previously announced) for Season 3 of Noah Hawley’s Coen Bros-based anthology series, Fargo. Her character’s name is Gloria Burgle, and apparently she’s “a practical woman who grabs the fire extinguisher when the bacon catches fire and everyone else panics.” Beyond Americana-infused figurative descriptions, she’s the police chief in Eden Valley, she’s a recently-single mother, and she’s wary of the reign of technology in people’s everyday lives. (The season is said to be set in or around the present.)
McGregor is playing a pair of brothers — one of whom is a magnetic, successful and fit real estate magnate, and the other is, per Variety, a “pot-bellied, balding” parole officer “who peaked in high school” and who’s seemingly bitter about his brother’s good fortune. The third season will likely air on FX sometime in 2017.