Marc Cherry had never heard of Allison Tolman when casting for Why Women Kill Season 2, adds that he wrote Lana Parrilla's part for Eva Longoria

The A.V. Club

The A.V. Club points out that Season 2 of his Paramount+ anthology series rested on Tolman and Parrilla's shoulders. "I’ll tell you something really funny about that," says Cherry. "So when I have my initial meetings with the head of CBS casting, I meet with my producers and I meet with their whole casting team. I was talking about what I was looking for in the character. They prepare a document, which they do on most TV shows; they gave me this long list of names, and the only name I didn’t recognize was Allison Tolman. And everyone immediately jumped down my throat: 'What, you haven’t seen the first season of Fargo?' So the next night after our meeting, I binged Fargo. And let me tell you, I worshiped that show and specifically Allison’s performance in it. And immediately she became my first choice. I said to everyone, I get it, I’m in love, let’s do it… and it’s been just a lovely working relationship which has now blossomed into absolute friendship because she’s just terrific. She really gets all styles of comedy; she got her start, I think, doing improv stuff in Chicago. You can see throughout the run of the series, she does some broader stuff and she does some things that are very silly indeed. I just had a blast with her. Now with Lana, it kind of was a different situation. I wrote the part for Eva Longoria. I gave it to Eva and she said, “Marc, it’s great, but I’m shooting a movie when you guys start production.” And I said, “Oh, shoot, if I wrote this for you, who else can play this? I’m terribly frustrated that you can’t do it.” And she said, 'You know, I’ve got this really good friend.' And this is the only time that’s ever happened to me in my career where I’ve offered something to an actor, and then they turn me on to the actor who ultimately got the part. So Lana came in and she read for it. And I fell in love immediately."