Emmy winner Ben Whishaw finds a home in quirky ‘Fargo’

LOS ANGELES – Before filming the latest edition of “Fargo,” Emmy winner Ben Whishaw immersed himself in gangster films.

“I hadn’t even seen ‘The Godfather,’” he admits. “It’s such a specific, American thing. I know it’s not exclusive to America – there are gangster stories all over the world – but something about this kind of story seems central to America.”

In the fourth installment of the FX series, the British-born Whishaw plays the guardian of an African-American boy who is “on loan” to a white gangster. His Rabbi Milligan is charged with protecting him from the violence of the world “and it’s kind of a healing of his own wound, having gone through the same thing as a child.”

Set in 1950s Kansas City, this “Fargo” introduces rival gangs hoping to keep the others in check. It has plenty of those “Godfather” hallmarks and a scope that Whishaw says he rarely sees in British television.

“This feels so huge,” he says. “In England, you feel like the sets are like sets – there’s an artificiality that I quite like. Here, the production values are quite extraordinary and the level of artistry is amazing.”

Whishaw, last year’s Emmy winner for “A Very English Scandal,” met “Fargo’s” executive producer Noah Hawley more than a year ago. “He’d seen a TV show I’d done and he’d enjoyed it. He sent me the (‘Fargo’) script and I loved it. It was just wonderful writing.”

The role, like so many others, met his criteria: “If it feels like I haven’t done it before, I’m always quite drawn to it.”

Rabbi, an Irishman, he says, epitomizes the immigrant experience. “I felt what it must be like to not fit in to this country,” he says. “He’s a very solitary character and he doesn’t fit in anywhere. I’m interested in that experience of immigrants who can’t, for whatever reason, assimilate and who remain constantly in some kind of limbo.”

In many ways, that’s Whishaw’s path in Hollywood. Although he has starred in big-budget films like “Mary Poppins Returns” and the upcoming James Bond film, “No Time To Die,” he always feels like an outsider.

“Because I do so many different things – I dip a toe in and then I’ll go and do a small film and then I’ll go do a play – I never feel like I belong. If I were just working in those big films, I might find it overwhelming.”

At the Golden Globes and Emmys, Whishaw says, “it was beautiful to be recognized for your work. But I find, to be honest, giving awards peculiar. Pitting actors against one another is quite odd and part of me feels like I’m set up to fail. Maybe that’s my paranoid, awful mind, but you feel, ‘Oh, no, now I’ve got to prove I was worthy of something.’”

If anything, success has gotten him to book work several years in advance.

“When I first started acting, you just went for it,” the 39-year-old says. “You’d finish a job and sit around and hope for an audition. In the last few years, I’ve become quite used to booking things in advance. I feel nervous if there’s not something coming up. It’s just, really, whatever happens. You’re blessed if someone sends you a script and they think of you.”

Although Whishaw was overwhelmed when he came to the United States as a child (to visit Disney World, no less), he still can’t get over the scale of everything – “the portions of food are so extravagantly huge” – and the length of television series. “I don’t want to do longer shows, but I’m enjoying this.”

Big-budget productions don’t require a different approach, just a willingness to adapt. “You just have to jump in and do it how you see it. You trust your own gut and your own sense of things.”

For this “Fargo,” he combined research with those gangster films.

“I always try to figure out when the character was born, where he was born and what was going on the world,” Whishaw says. “I like the sense of it, even if you never think about it again.”

Arriving on set, “there are so many unknowns. You don’t know what the room is going to be like, what the other person is going to do. So you really just have to be open. You let (the research) go and try not to think too much.”

Awaiting the release of the third James Bond film, Whishaw says he doesn’t look back on past performances and wonder if he could have another go at a character. “Only this thing called ‘The Hour,’ which got canceled after the second season. That, I felt we didn’t get to finish the story. I wanted to do that.”

Now, with several projects lined up, the soft-spoken actor says he still feels anxiety before he starts anything. The trophies (that are discreetly hidden around his home) don’t quell his fears. Instead, he says, “You start every job as if it were your first.”