A natural connection: David Rysdahl draws on past for roles in 'Fargo,' 'Oppenheimer'

When David Rysdahl was asked if he could do a “Fargo” accent for the latest season of the FX series, he didn’t hesitate.

The longtime New Ulm, Minnesota, resident grew up in the land of “uff da” and could turn it on in a minute.

“When I first got the audition, I told my dad, ‘I’m finally accepting the fact that I am you,’” Rysdahl says. “There’s a beautiful irony to it.”

In the latest season – set in 2019 – Rysdahl plays Wayne Lyon, a car dealer and husband to Dorothy Lyon, a seemingly quiet housewife and mother who upends the status quo in her community and puts a North Dakota sheriff (played by Jon Hamm) on notice.

Minnesota nice

“I definitely tapped into my dad and to my uncles,” Rysdahl says. Like the Coen Brothers’ original, this version of “Fargo” “wasn’t making fun of us…it was celebrating us. It was really important for me that Wayne wasn’t a joke. He’s one of the only decent men in this whole season.”

To make sure their accents were Minnesota/Dakota perfect, other actors like Juno Temple, who plays Dorothy, asked for advice. “I felt responsibilities,” Rysdahl says with a smile. Able to pinpoint variations in the “Fargo” accent, he even went on Facebook and “listened to real people and tried to make it as authentic as possible.”

The celebration of Minnesota culture, as the 36-year-old calls it, found him in various places around the globe before shooting actually began in Calgary, Alberta.

Rysdahl taped two scenes with his wife, actress Zazie Beetz, while she was appearing in "Black Mirror" in Europe. He sent it in, got word they were interested, did a Zoom call with folks from Los Angeles and, finally, got a call in Berlin saying he got the job.

“It was a normal casting experience,” Rysdahl says. “But I just felt that I was going to get it. I was like, ‘I know this man. I definitely know my way into the character.’”

Another connection

Rysdahl had an “in” with another character he played this year, chemist Donald Hornig in “Oppenheimer.”

“You have no idea what the script is. They don’t want to give it to anybody. All they said was, ‘You're a professor of physics lecturing to a group of students. You have two monologues full of science jargon.’”

Like “Fargo,” the assignment had a relationship to his life. Rysdahl was a chemistry major at St. Olaf College. “I know what this stuff is…it wasn’t just words to me. I can make it real.” Even better, he had an organic chemistry professor who made the subject fun. “Oppenheimer’s” casting directors “wanted to make sure you could do the scientific talk without it feeling like you’re an actor.”

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Shot at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where J. Robert Oppenheimer led a team building the atomic bomb, the film brought Rysdahl into contact with some of the industry’s heavy hitters.

“I got there and I couldn’t sleep the whole night. I got into this van to go to set and the first person I met was Cillian Murphy,” the film’s Oppenheimer. “We just chatted on the way and he was so down to earth and inviting, I was like, ‘Oh this is going to be a fun experience.’”

When the film was being made, Russians had just invaded Ukraine and that affected actors on the set. “We felt we were replaying a moment in history that was being recycled.”

Those two projects – “Fargo” and “Oppenheimer” – were like a marriage of Rysdahl’s past.

“I was a chemistry major because I loved science but, secretly, I was doing all this acting.” In his senior year, Rysdahl had to make a choice – an internship at a lab or an apprenticeship at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minnesota. He chose the latter and “had the time of my life. I realized you could do this for a living.” Painting houses in order to get money to move to New York, Rysdahl figured out a way to make it work (he used his chemistry major to tutor kids; he got a job at the Standard Hotel).

“For my first three years in New York, I just fell more in love (with the business). It was hard; I was broke the whole time. But I was living around all these young artists and it was really crazy.”

Breaking in

On weekends, Rysdahl made short films with his friends. “I remember thinking, ‘Don’t try to look ahead too much. Just look at what’s happening right now and appreciate that.” During the time, he made some 50 short films but never looked back. “All of my chemistry friends were suddenly doctors.” Choosing that path might have brought different challenges, but “who am I trying to impress? I kept enjoying it. I was feeling fulfilled by it constantly and was meeting great people.”

Gradually, bigger roles started to come. Rysdahl got parts in “Dead Pigs,” “Nine Days” and “No Exit” before landing “Fargo.”

Next steps

Now, he has another connection.

Noah Hawley, the creator of the “Fargo” television series, sent him an email after his last day as Wayne Lyon: “There’s something maybe in ‘Alien’ for you.”

In February, he’ll start work on the series.

“Fargo,” he says, is a morality tale about the good and the not-so-good in life. “This season is really about the past trauma, the past deaths. You cannot run, right? It’s going to catch you and you’re going to have to deal with that. As a nation, as a society, we all have debt. We have past trauma that is being brought up and we’re going to have to deal with it before we can actually move forward. There’s no more avoiding it.”