Noah Hawley Interviews

Legion Press | Crew Interviews | Cast Interviews

The following are published interviews featuring Noah Hawley.

## Print

### 2017

FX’s ‘Legion’ Is the Kind of Show “Marvel Has Never Done Before” [Archived Copy] by Lesley Goldberg - The Hollywood Reporter - January 12, 2017

> *“Finding David’s storyline and introducing Rachel’s storyline and this idea of this epic love story and then putting the genre back into it and saying, ‘If we have a character who isn’t sure what’s real, could we make a show that’s subjective?'”*
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Legion's Hawley Calls Co-Creator Sienkiewicz's Visuals 'A Goal to Reach' [Archived Copy] by Scott Huver - CBR - February 8, 2017

> *This idea that David and the comics has a multiple personality disorder, which is not something that we’re literally doing this year, but you are seeing facets of things that make you wonder whether this is all, as in “The Wizard of Oz,” a little bit of, “You were there, and you were there, and you were there…” and they’re all sort of parts of him, on some level.*
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### 2018

‘Legion’ Creator Noah Hawley Admits Season 2 Will Wage War on Your Senses [Archived Copy] by Brandon Katz - Observer - April 2, 2018

> *“[Other superhero shows] do it all very well, but what else can the genre do?” Hawley said of his mindset heading into this show. “Part of it is just trying to find how to use genre to say that if anything is possible, let’s not take anything for granted.”*
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Interview: Noah Hawley Explains What 'Legion' Is Really About [Archived Copy] by Ben Yakas - Gothamist - May 1, 2018

> *"I've said that I've never made a second season of anything, which is true to the degree that I've never continued a story into a second season. And so honestly, I didn't really have a strong sense of how to simply continue the story, as funny as that might sound. For a show that is attempting to get below the surface of a complicated mind, it didn't just seem like we went from confusion to clarity in season one and we're just going to live in clarity now."*
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*Legion* finale: Showrunner Noah Hawley on the show's surprise new villain [Archived Copy] by Nick Romano - Entertainment Weekly - June 12, 2018

> *"For me, I always had this question in my mind, what would happen if Walter White was a supervillain? That Breaking Bad superhero show. This idea, especially in the X-Men universe, that the moral line between good and evil is often fudge-able. Magneto, who sometimes is their villain and sometimes is on their side, and the idea of what the right thing to do is can shift depending on the circumstances. So I wanted to evolve the show so that you realize over time that maybe David's not the hero of your show, but maybe Syd is the hero of your show."*
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*Legion* Creator Noah Hawley on David’s Shocking Betrayal in the Season-Two Finale [Archived Copy] by Abraham Josephine Riesman - Vulture - June 12, 2018

> *"I mean, for me, the whole show started with this idea, even before I had assigned a character to it. It was just: What can I do in this genre? I felt like, for the genre to be great, it would have to be a great show regardless of the genre. I thought, Well, it would be interesting if it was a supervillain story on some level. To say, How do you take a character from a sympathetic place to an unsympathetic place?"*
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### 2019

How Professor X Fits Into the Final Season of FX’s ‘Legion’ [Archived Copy] by Tim Baysinger - The Wrap - February 5, 2019

> *“We know enough, even in the mythology of the show, to know that when David was born his father went off to fight [Amal Farouk] and kick Farouk out of his body,” Noah Hawley, the show’s creator, told TheWrap. “And so I think what we’re going to explore, is that story.”*
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‘Legion’ Showrunner Breaks Down How Time Travel Sets Up the X-Men Show’s Endgame [Archived Copy] by Tim Baysinger - The Wrap - June 24, 2019

> *“It’s clear the only way he’s gonna solve things is by going back in time to give himself another chance,” continues Hawley, who teased that David going back to this moment is going to have an unintended effect. “There’s always consequences in a time travel story, and that’s where the fun begins.”*
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Legion creator Noah Hawley on writing David as the villain and introducing Charles Xavier [Archived Copy] by Matt Patches - Polygon - June 25, 2019

> *"To be fair to myself, I was meant to have more time. I sat down with both Searchlight and FX together to talk about when I could make Lucy and Legion season 3. The initial conversation was that I would make Lucy and then we would push season 3. That didn’t end up being what happen, so ... it’s a bit of a blur to me. I guess I made season 2 of Legion, went into prep on the movie, then shot the movie. And then the day that we wrapped the movie, I was 12 weeks out on Legion season 3 and had to write all of those scripts while I was editing the film."*
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How Legion Creator Noah Hawley Got the Show Back on Track in Season Three [Archived Copy] by Joanna Robinson - Vanity Fair - June 24, 2019

> *Even though the character of Legion is a villain in the comics, Hawley is known for playing with expectations—and, enhanced by a brilliant performance from Stevens that danced on the edge of innocent vulnerability and gleeful mania, there always seemed to be the possibility that this version of David might be saved.*
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## Podcasts

The Watch Episode 133 Noah Hawley - March 16, 2017

> The Ringer's Andy Greenwald sits down with Noah Hawley, the showrunner and creator of FX's 'Legion' and 'Fargo,' to talk about last night's episode of 'Legion' (6:00) as well as the creative process of the show (11:30) and his upcoming projects (43:45).
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