E.B. Farnum

E.B. Farnum runs the Grand Central Hotel and angles for whatever scraps of status the camp of Deadwood might toss his way. Fawning to whoever holds power, prickly to those beneath him, he's a small man scrambling to look important, forever calculating who to flatter next.

Sanderson plays him with a hunched, wheedling physicality that makes every ingratiating smile look painful to produce. The writing gives him gorgeous, tortured syntax and comic cowardice, but never lets him become a pure joke — his desperation and pettiness feel entirely human amid the camp's grander violence.