Three days after Juno Temple wrapped production on Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso,” she started working on FX’s “Fargo.” That meant switching gears from playing Keeley Jones, a footballer’s girlfriend–turned-executive, to Dorothy Lyon, a sweet Midwestern mom with a fierce hidden identity.
“I had to start introducing Dot into my world whilst still inhabiting Keeley—and, you know, sometimes being Juno,” the actor says with a laugh. “So there were quite a lot of personalities in the apartment [where] I was living in London.”
Despite that chaos, it was something of a blessing that she had to leave her “Ted Lasso” character behind so quickly—because Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, and Bill Lawrence’s award-winning comedy phenomenon was a life-affirming experience that led to deep friendships.
“Having a drawn-out goodbye without knowing what was happening next would have actually been quite difficult,” Temple says. Instead, she immediately became Dot, whom she calls “one of the most terrifying and exciting women I’ve ever been introduced to.” Now, her work on Noah Hawley’s anthology series has earned her a fourth Emmy nod (following the three she received for playing Keeley), this time for lead actress in a limited series or movie.
When we speak a few weeks before nominations are announced, Temple hasn’t seriously considered the idea of doing an awards run without her “Ted Lasso” family. She’s Zooming from South Africa, where she’s currently filming Gore Verbinski’s latest movie, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” opposite Sam Rockwell. She tells me she just got back from an “incredible” safari she took during her days off.
Though it’s daytime for me, night has fallen for her; she’s speaking by candlelight so she can sit outside and smoke while she talks. Her face, illuminated by the flicker of the flame and her burning cigarette, is framed by a mass of yellow curls. In the distance, you can hear the brash calls of native hadeda birds.
The London-born actor started performing professionally when she was a teenager. Today, she’s as enchanted as ever by the fact that she gets to work in cinema and television. “It’s my first day [filming] on a new set tomorrow, and it’s going to be one of those sets that you walk onto and it’s a fucking privilege,” she says.
That feeling of magic has been there from the beginning. Temple fell in love with cinema when she was 4 years old and watched Jean Cocteau’s classic French film “La Belle et la Bête.” It was her first experience with being fully transported by the art of movies—though she admits that a career in the industry may have been inevitable, considering she’s the daughter of director Julien Temple and producer Amanda Pirie.
“I think people would be lying if they tell you that [it] doesn’t get under your skin, having parents who teach you about light and how it hits the trees at certain points in the day and about things that are from the perspective of the camera lens,” the actor says. “They find beauty in places where you didn’t know it could be.”
“Figuring out those two imperatively important aspects of Dot really got under my skin in the sense of, like: You can be ferocious and survive a lot of things and always do them with an element of understanding”
When she was 14, she told her parents that she wanted to try her hand at acting. They were hesitant, worried about the inevitable rejection that comes with the job. But Temple has learned to embrace being told no. As a huge fan of “Alice in Wonderland,” she was devastated when her agent told her that Tim Burton didn’t think she was right for the title role in his 2010 film.
“The movie came out, and I was blown away by how he created this world,” she recalls. “And it was the realization of, like: Holy shit—one day, I’m supposed to be the Queen of Hearts. I already fell down the rabbit hole a long time ago.” She believes that “the final picture is always what it’s supposed to be.”
Over the years, Temple has made her mark in films like Joe Wright’s “Atonement” (2007) and Joey Soloway’s “Afternoon Delight” (2013). But it was “Ted Lasso” that significantly shifted her career over the course of its three seasons. For one thing, the show proved to her that she could do comedy after years of performing in what she calls “major” dramas like William Friedkin’s lurid thriller “Killer Joe” (2011) and the ’70s-set HBO music series “Vinyl” (2016).
Brett Goldstein, who played Keeley’s sometime-boyfriend Roy Kent on “Ted Lasso,” was surprised by just how funny his costar was when they started working together. “She had never done a comedy and kept telling us that she didn’t know how to be funny,” he wrote in an email. “And she was so funny—just a natural comedic talent. So it was lovely to see this hardcore dramatic actor discovering on set that she was also insanely funny.”
Following her time as Keeley, opportunities started rolling in for Temple to play “women, not girls.” She’d previously been cast as troubled youths exploring their sexuality; now, she was in a position to take on more mature parts. Dot on “Fargo,” for instance, is a mother. It isn’t the first time the actor has inhabited that role, but it is the first time the character hasn’t felt like a kid herself.
Temple initially found the prospect of playing Dot intimidating. And it’s true that she’s one of the most complicated characters to come out of “Fargo,” the sprawling Midwest-set crime series Hawley adapted from Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar-winning 1996 film.
On Season 5, Dot is a woman determined to escape her past who hides her trauma beneath a plucky exterior. We first meet her when she’s booked for accidentally assaulting a cop while trying to protect her daughter, Scotty (Sienna King), at a school meeting gone awry.
As the story progresses, viewers learn that her resilience is hard-won. Her arrest puts her in the sights of her abusive ex-husband, Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), who wants her back, furious that she ran away to start a new life without him. At every turn—whether she’s being pursued by kidnappers or unfairly institutionalized—Dot proves to be extremely resourceful when it comes to protecting herself, her new husband, Wayne (David Rysdahl), and Scotty.
“I think she is unbelievably brave and an extraordinary survivor and a nurturer, and I hope I can be as nurturing as she is,” Temple says. “She really leads with her heart, and that is one of her survival skills, actually.”
Working alongside King was revelatory for the actor. “I had one of the most profoundly important relationships with her,” Temple says. “That girl was so special and so important to me. Getting to play her mother was…an opportunity that I didn’t think was going to be as meaningful [as it turned out to be]; and I didn’t know it was going to come into my life at that moment.”
Projecting Dot’s duality as a fighter who possesses a deep well of tenderness presented an acting challenge; they were also qualities she tried to absorb herself. As a performer, Temple considered when viewers should see the “don’t fuck with me” peek out from beneath her character’s sweet exterior.
“Figuring out those two imperatively important aspects of Dot really got under my skin in the sense of, like: You can be ferocious and survive a lot of things and always do them with an element of understanding,” the actor explains. “I think that’s a lesson that is really important for anyone in the world [to learn].”
According to Rysdahl, Temple stepped into a leadership role on set, fully aware of the responsibility that came with playing the lead. “She devoted herself to the emotional truth of Dorothy’s backstory, knowing that she was portraying a character that would bring up trauma for many people watching the show,” he wrote. “She didn’t shy away from the darkness, and she actively took care of the crew and other cast members during some of the darkest scenes.”
Hamm, who performed alongside her in those scenes, says that they were intense and difficult to shoot. He was impressed that, in Temple’s hands, Dot’s optimism was evident. “What’s amazing about the show and what’s amazing about her performance, as well, is that her light and her energy and her positivity shine through,” he explains.
Beyond overcoming those emotional hurdles, being cast in “Fargo” also meant that Temple had to master a Minnesota accent. Weeks before she arrived in Calgary to start shooting, she began training with the show’s dialect coach, Elizabeth Himelstein, who also worked on the original film.
“It’s hard,” the actor says. “It’s the combination of so many different sounds in one. But then when it clicks—oh, my God. It’s, like, the most exciting thing. All you want to do is speak in that accent.” She even tried it out in the airport on her way to Calgary. But she admits it wasn’t a great idea, considering that her passport revealed her origins.
While she wasn’t always in character on set (she often gabbed with her coworkers as Juno), she tried to maintain Dot’s lilting accent. It’s not a tradition Temple always follows, but it’s one she employs if she finds a dialect particularly difficult to crack. “I just never want to ruin a moment when you’re in it with other people,” she explains. “[I don’t want] the accent to be the reason why you trip up.”
But Dot’s voice was hard to shake after living with it for so long. When her friends or parents called to check in on her over the weekend, she occasionally answered in the accent. Rysdahl says that when he went out to dinner with her, he remembered: “Oh, yeah, she’s British!”
Though Temple doesn’t consider herself a Method actor, she does allow her characters’ lives to “navigate” her own. It’s only after she finishes a job that she realizes how deep she’s been in it. “My fiancé is like, ‘Hey, Juno! Missed ya,’ ” she says with a laugh. But she finds that the bond she creates with her characters is special; she wants them to leave a mark on her.
Her costars can feel that commitment on set. “She knows her stuff; she knows her character,” Goldstein wrote. “She is ready to be in it as soon as they call action. But best of all, she is there to be in the scene with you.”
Temple is always up for trying new things. While she was filming one of the climactic sequences on “Fargo,” which took place in a hole filled with human bones, she was reading the script for her next project: “Venom: The Last Dance,” which hits theaters on Oct. 25. She stars alongside Tom Hardy’s title antihero as a scientist studying alien symbiotes. It’s her biggest role to date in a studio movie.
She had to act opposite tennis balls, which the project’s VFX team later worked their magic on, transforming them into gooey creatures from outer space. “You’re like, Shit, I didn’t know I could find a tennis ball so mesmerizing,” she recalls. “That was a wild ride. It felt like a new adventure to explore a movie like that.”
Temple is jumping from role to role these days, but she doesn’t take this run for granted; she knows that the next gig isn’t guaranteed. Since she gets panicky in the last few weeks of filming any project, finishing a job is always a bit devastating. Even when it’s not one as meaningful to her personally as, for example, “Ted Lasso,” it’s always hard to say goodbye after growing a character in collaboration with all the departments who created that world.
“I’m still 4-year-old Juno watching ‘La Belle et la Bête’ on a daily basis when I get to be at work,” she says. “I love what I do so much.”
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of Backstage Magazine.