Why Longmire's Officer Mathias Looks So Familiar

In 2015, Zahn McClarnon was still busy playing Officer Mathias when he appeared as a radically different character in the second season of FX’s black comedy crime series “Fargo.” Hanzee Dent starts out as the mild-mannered, soft-spoken enforcer for the Gerhardt gang, but his humble exterior hides a truly brutal man. As one of the biggest shocks of the season, Hanzee becomes the show’s ultimate antagonist when he finally has enough of the Gerhardts’ disrespect and embarks on a Terminator-style rampage that presents him as truly unstoppable.

Despite his violent and remorseless nature, Hanzee is a complex character who yearns for respect, yet is constantly pushed down by the Gerhardts and the racist society of the late 1970s. When you look at his CV, it’s pretty clear that his stellar job playing this character and his work in “Longmire” truly put McClarnon on the map. However, the actor himself told The New York Times that he initially thought he wouldn’t get the role, as he felt his audition went badly. Luckily, series creator Noah Hawley thought otherwise.

“After I finished, Noah [Hawley] just stared at me for a minute,” McClarnon said. “I said, ‘Do you want me to make adjustments or anything?’ And he kind of looked at me and said: ‘Nah. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ Then two weeks later, he hired me.”

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