Ewan McGregor on Fargo : 'Hardest accent I’ve ever done'

Ewan McGregor has started shooting Fargo season 3, playing two very different brothers (who are not twins). As part of a panel promoting the show at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Thursday, executive producer Warren Littlefield marveled that the Star Wars actor showed up on set a day early, despite it being a freezing-cold shoot an hour’s drive out into the Canadian countryside. “But he just wanted to be there,” Littlefield told reporters.

McGregor, however, confessed to an ulterior motive. “I didn’t like the idea of them starting without me, plus the Fargo dialect coach was there, and I needed him,” said the actor, whose head was shaved to make it easier to wear wigs on the show.

Both the Scottish actor’s very different characters speak in the show’s distinctive Minnesota accent, and the stage and screen veteran confessed he’s never struggled more to pin down a manner of speaking. “It’s very difficult, strange accent to lock into,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s harder as a non-American. It’s the hardest accent I’ve ever done, and I’ve done Dutch once!”

The producer kept largely quiet about the upcoming season, in which McGregor plays a successful local businessman and his parole officer brother. The story is set in 2010, the most modern edition of the show yet. Littlefield said to expect the script to comment on current-ish technology in a way the previous seasons did not.

This wasn’t the first time McGregor has struggled with an accent; he also had a rough time mastering a French accent for his role in Beauty and the Beast.

Fargo returns to FX in April for 10 episodes.