The narrator used in episode 9 says historians have puzzled for decades over why the character turns on the Gerhardts. What do you think the answer is?
I think his agenda came about gradually, starting with being a young boy adopted and oppressed and growing up in two, most likely, very dysfunctional families. I don’t know if there’s a clear reason why Hanzee went where he went, but more will be revealed in episode 10.
How much do you know about his background?
What I know for sure is only what’s in the scripts. I have my own backstory for Hanzee. He’s a local Lakota Sioux Indian from the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. I think he was quite traumatized by growing up with the Gerhardts and being a tunnel rat in Vietnam, plus all that was going on in the 1970s in that area with the uprising of the Native American people. Noah never confirmed it, but the name Hanzee translates as “shadow” in my language, Lakota Sioux Indian. I grew up in Nebraska and South Dakota. My mom was born and raised on the Standing Rock Reservation, then moved up to Browning, Mont., which is the Blackfeet Reservation. So I’m very familiar with that whole Interstate 29 corridor and growing up in the ‘70s both on and off the reservation.
Am I right that you’re also part Irish?
My father was Irish. He passed away about 10 years ago. He was raised up in Wisconsin and Colorado, where he met my mom in Denver. McClarnon! I’m very proud to be Irish.
When he takes out the guys at the bar, he shoots them in the knee.
I experienced some of that stuff growing up, like not being served in a certain restaurant in Montana where waitresses would actually walk away when they saw a family of little brown boys and a white father with his brown wife. It’s gotten a heck of a lot better, but in those border towns where the reservations are, there’s still a lot of racism.
It now seems inevitable, but it was still shocking to me when Hanzee killed Floyd.
When you’re on set, you have no idea how it’s all going to be cut together, especially that scene. We shot that for about three nights and I took out 11 people, I think. When I watched the episode I couldn’t stop smiling. When Peggy said “C’mon, darling, it’s just a UFO,” I laughed so hard the dog started barking next door. Not a lot is shown about the relationship between Hanzee and Floyd, so it will be interesting to see how people react to Hanzee taking her out. The expression on his face—he’s pretty blank. It’s just something he had to do to further his agenda.