Chris Rock

Chris Rock cast as lead in 'Fargo' season 4

Noah Hawley‘s acclaimed anthology series Fargo will air its fourth season for FX in 2019, and the network has just announced its leading star: Chris Rock. According to Vulture, Rock will play the head of a criminal organization in 1950s Kansas City. In a news interview, Rock said, “I’m a fan of Fargo, and I can’t wait to work with Noah.” Here’s more about the upcoming season:

In 1950, at the end of two great American migrations — that of Southern Europeans from countries like Italy, who came to the US at the turn of the last century and settled in northern cities like New York, Chicago — and African Americans who left the south in great numbers to escape Jim Crow and moved to those same cities — you saw a collision of outsiders, all fighting for a piece of the American dream. In Kansas City, Missouri, two criminal syndicates have struck an uneasy peace. One Italian, one African American. Together they control an alternate economy — that of exploitation, graft and drugs. This too is the history of America. To cement their peace, the heads of both families have traded their eldest sons.
Chris Rock plays the head of one family, a man who — in order to prosper — has surrendered his oldest boy to his enemy, and who must in turn raise his son’s enemy as his own. It’s an uneasy peace, but profitable. And then the head of the Kansas City mafia goes into the hospital for routine surgery and dies. And everything changes. It’s a story of immigration and assimilation, and the things we do for money. And as always, a story of basically decent people who are probably in over their heads. You know, Fargo.

Chris Rock has had a fairly exciting 2018 so far, releasing his great Netflix special Tamborine back in February (which was filmed in Brooklyn), and starring in the Netflix film The Week Of alongside Adam Sandler. You can watch a small clip from Tamborine below.

In semi-related news, Tom Waits is going to be in a new Coen Brothers film.