Noah Hawley On ‘Legion’ Snub & ‘Fargo’s Big Emmy Day

In the wake of reaping 16 Emmy nominations for the third season of Fargo this morning, creator Noah Hawley continued to emphasize how he’s not closing the door on the FX series despite the noise that sounded over the summer that the plug was being pulled.

“It’s not my goal to not make any more,” said Hawley, “I don’t think we’d continue to get the volume of the nominations if we just went out and rushed (season 4). We’re rewarded for taking our time and continue to take time.”

In a post-mortem about the season 3 finale, Hawley told us “Right now, I just can’t point to (a production start) date on the calendar” with his Legion set to go into production in September and two movies in development that he’s planning to direct: Fox Searchlight’s Reese Witherspoon female astronaut movie Pale Blue Dot and the feature adaptation of Hawley’s plane crash novel Before The Fall. 

Speaking of Hawley’s adaptation of the X-Men spinoff comic Legion about David Haller, an extraordinary young man with an awesome telekinetic power  who is diagnosed as a schizophrenia, Emmy voters completely overlooked the mesmerizing series today, particularly in regards to Aubrey Plaza’s twisted, sublime Lenny Busker/Shadow King who haunts David as well as various below-the-line categories including Michael Wylie’s mesmerizing production design.

However, Hawley gets it. Genre series just take time with Emmy voters.

“I would run into those guys from Game of thrones and they’d show up, never win, but then they finally won. It was a process to get that genre to that place where people consider it a real drama. There is a process to it. I never expected anything, I guess. The pilot for Legion was really special and it would have been nice to be recognized for that, but I also understand the genre itself is an obstacle for some people and it can take two to three season of a show being made before it gets under the genre bend.”

Including limited series, Hawley was recognized for the first episode of Fargo‘s season 3 “The Law of Vacant Pieces” in the directing and writing category. He already won an outstanding miniseries Emmy for the first season of the show. Throughout the series three season runs it counts 52 noms, and five wins.