“When I was coming up, if you went to television from film, it meant something was wrong,” Billy Bob Thornton says. “You may as well as be on, like, ‘Hollywood Squares.'”
But, the actor said this week at the TV Critics Association winter press tour, “now it’s the opposite.”
Talking about his role on the upcoming FX adaptation of “Fargo,” in which he portrays a malevolent stranger, Thornton recalled other actors of his generation, from Dennis Quiad and Kevin Bacon to Bill Paxton and Kevin Costner.
“The movies we were accustomed to doing, say, in the ’80s and ’90s into the early 2000s, they were the midlevel movies for studios and higher budget independent films. And that’s especially where I lived. That doesn’t really exist anymore. The motion picture studios make big event movies, and they make broad comedies, and they make action movies and movies about where evidently vampires are all models.”
One way or another, he went on, “television has now taken that spot. So for actors who really want to do good dramatic work or good work with dark humor and drama, you kind of have to do it on television. And it’s a great opportunity to develop a character over a period of time.”
Thornton said he saw”The Wire” and, encouraged, went on to see “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Sopranos” and added “my buddy Paxton was in that Mormon show.”
Noting that new direction, he said he realized “what’s on television now is actually like the movies that we were doing. So it’s inevitable that actors are going to go to television now.
“If you want to be a celebrity, you know, then just go to the dentist in Beverly Hills and, like, punch somebody or something,” he deadpanned. “But if you want to be an actor, get on a really good series on television because that’s where it’s at.”
Especially “Fargo,” which has much of the same tone of the beloved Coen Brothers movie, but different characters and an anthology style single case told over each 10 episode season.
Thornton says the scripts by Noah Hawley, who wrote all 10 episodes, “while paying a great tribute to the movie and having the same tone, that’s all great, but it’s its own fresh thing.
“Playing a character who is sort of the enigma is kind of in my wheelhouse and right down my alley,” he says.
And noting the caliber of people in the production, including Martin Freeman, Colin Hanks and Bob Odenkirk, “there was really no reason to not do it.
“Now it’s actually a feather in your cap to be in a great television thing as opposed to, like I referred to earlier, ‘The Hollywood Squares’ thing. So you don’t have to apologize for being on a great TV show. It’s actually something to be very proud of. And when they said it’s only 10 episodes and then you go back and do movies, I said, ‘Bingo!’”
He also loves his character, who wears an odd set of bangs.
“It’s not a typical bad guy,” Thornton says. “It’s sort of God and the Devil and all wrapped up into one, a puppet master in some sense who is not only capable of very dangerous things, but he also is very mischievous and toys with people.
“And a lot has been said about the haircut, and my manager actually said to me when he saw the first dailies he said, ‘It looks like you’re channeling the dark side of Ken Burns.’ And I thought that was great.