One of the last, great things I loved on television was Billy Bob Thornton’s evil Lorne Malvo character during the first season of “Fargo” on FX. I haven’t binged on Thornton’s new series “Goliath” yet, but it looks like that’s next.
The 8-episode series, which premiered on Prime Video on Oct. 14, stars Thornton as a powerful lawyer who is now “burned out and washed up” and spends “more time in a bar than a courtroom.” But his character, Billy McBride “reluctantly agrees to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against the biggest client of the massive law firm he helped create,” according to the Amazon description. William Hurt and Maria Bello also star.
Thornton told Amazon in a Q&A that his experience with “Fargo” attracted him to the part and to working with the streaming service.
“I thought well, since the independent-film business is pretty much over these days, so this is where you do it — you do it on these miniseries and things like that for Amazon,” Thornton said.
Another thing “Fargo” probably prepped him for is just how much trouble one character can come across.
“This guy runs up against a lot of stuff,” Thornton told Amazon. “It’s hard to talk about a show like this, because you’re going to give up what happens. I’ll put it this way, the butler didn’t do it.”
And because the company that is streaming his new series also puts packages on his front porch, Thornton was asked about the last thing he bought on Amazon.
“Actually, our groceries, day before yesterday. We get all of our food from Amazon,” Thornton said. “I haven’t been to the grocery store in a long time. So yeah, the last thing I got was bananas and blueberries and coffee creamer. All that kind of stuff. We have the Alexa thing, y’know? We have, like, three of them in the house. So we’re always sitting around saying, ‘Alexa, play Neil Young.’ It’s pretty handy.”
