411mania Interviews: Justified's Walton Goggins

Posted by Al Norton on 01.17.2012

411's Al Norton sits down for an exclusive in-depth conversation with Emmy nominated actor Walton Goggins to discuss The Shield, working with Spielberg, and the upcoming season of Justified.





Walton Goggins had been seen on the big screen in movies like Major League 3 and The Apostle and Shanghai Noon and in guest spots on TV shows such as JAG, Pacific Blue, and NYPD Blue, but it was his performance as Shane Vendrell on The Shield that served as his major introduction to the world and earned him a TCA Nomination in 2009. He received an Emmy nomination in 2011 for his current role as Boyd Crowder on FX's Justified, which returns for a third season tonight at 10pm.

Al Norton: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk today.

Walton Goggins: Thank you so much for your generosity towards us, towards me, and especially towards the show. We really, really appreciate it. It's my honor, really.

Al Norton: What's interesting is I've never seen you on a late night talk show, never seen you in a tabloid, never seen you on Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight…

Walton Goggins: Yeah, I try to stay out of that stuff. I try my best. Sometimes it wouldn't bad to be in US Magazine but for the most part I do my best to stay away. I've got a couple of friends that come over to the house and the photographers are more interested in those friends then they are in me, thank god (laughing).

Al Norton: Three seasons in, how closely does Boyd resemble who you thought he was when you showed up to shoot the pilot?

Walton Goggins: There's no resemblance, really, but then he's exactly as he started off, just wearing a different coat. It's a tricky question for me to answer because in some ways he's as much of a showman as he ever was but he's just on a different stage and he's using different words to motivate people. I still think he's on some levels a Svengali but he's a more truthful Svengali, if that makes sense. He's still a showman but he's working on his oration (laughing). It was a quick descent and it's been a long climb back up for him.

Al Norton: I've read that Boyd was supposed to die in the original pilot script for Justified…

Walton Goggins: Not supposed to die; I died. We filmed it. I was dead (laughing). It was a one off and I was in Pittsburgh with everybody and it was great, a really good group of people. I'm a big fan of Tim's (Olyphant) and Graham's (Yost) and obviously the FX network and they called and asked and I said "let's make this really good, really special." I mean, it's Elmore Leonard, how could I not do it. I just wanted the room to do what I wanted to do with it and they agreed. And that was it, it was just going to be the once.

Al Norton: When did your phone ring and were you surprised? I mean, obviously you must have been surprised, and I'm guessing thrilled.

Walton Goggins: I was. I was thrilled because of everyone I just mentioned, because of being in business with everyone I just mentioned, including Elmore Leonard. My God, it's Elmore Leonard. To get to play in a representation of his world every week is a dream come true for anybody, whether it's a film or a television show. His characters are so complex and so richly drawn.

On that level it was very exciting but I was just questioning when I needed to put my toe back into television, you know? And in what way, with what role? I didn't want it to be too soon. I wanted it to be on FX, I mean I certainly hoped it would be on FX, but I wanted the audience to have enough time after The Shield to really be able to see me in a different role and not associate Shane Vendrell with whatever character I was playing. That character meant so much to me, Shane was so very, very close to my heart, as were all the creators and creative people on that journey, and I just wanted to be very specific in something that couldn't be compared to him. It was out of respect for the audience as well.





Al Norton: You mentioned Shane and The Shield; it's a couple of years behind you now but were you satisfied how both he and the show finished up?

Walton Goggins: Oh god, yes. 100%. It took me some time to come around to it. The first time I read it I literally said, "there's no way I'm going to do this. There's no way I'm going to kill my family. I'm not going to do it." Shane had to overcome so many things to get sympathy from the audience and without sympathy, to play someone who is morally challenged without creating sympathy for that character, than you don't have anything. Why watch him? I thought, "if you have him kill his family, there's no recovering from that."

The second time I read it I thought, "that's it. The brilliance of Shawn Ryan is coming through now. He will have all the sympathy because he is the martyr, he is the one that pays the highest price for the crimes that everybody committed." I waited for a year to see if that would be the case. I told no one, didn't tell my wife, didn't tell my Mother. I didn't tell one friend because that's the oath we all took about the show.

We were watching the show in a theater full of people and I was holding her hand and she had no idea what was coming, and then it happened. The theater went silent and I heard gasp after gasp after gasp, including from my girl, and then I heard tears and I thought, "we got them. Where's Shawn? It worked man, it worked." To have the audience hate him would have been a miserable failure but between that and the way the show ended for everyone else, it was so satisfying to me.

Al Norton: I interviewed Michael Chiklis about a year and a half ago and he seemed very interested in revisiting the show and its characters at some point down the line and if they wrote Shane into the script, either in a flashback or a dream sequence, is that something you'd be interested in?

Walton Goggins: Oh yeah, of course. Absolutely. I'd appear in a bubble above Chicky's head (laughing). Right over his bed (laughing). Absolutely. I don't know if it will ever happen but it sure is nice to think about. I kept four things from The Shield; I kept the boots I wore for seven years, I kept my leather jacket I wore for six years, I kept my keychain with a bullet on it, and I kept my badge. It's all right there if I ever need it again.





Al Norton: It's a testament to how well you and Joelle (Carter) play your roles that Boyd and Ava's transition has been believable...

Walton Goggins: Thank you for saying that, I really appreciate it.

Al Norton: When you started seeing the stuff between the two of them in the second season where you surprised by it or did the two of you know that you had that kind of connection showing up on screen?

Walton Goggins: I thought we had something but we hadn't worked together that often. We started to at the end of the first season, certainly with Boyd's mea culpa to Ava, and it was really nice. She's such a wonderful actress, so present and so easy to work with, and I thought, "this could go somewhere." We talked at the beginning of season two and we were both very excited about what they had in mind. What I kept pushing for early on was letting it take it's time, really letting it take it's time.

There was one scene in particular where I talked to them about wanting to open it up a little bit. I thought they did such a great job building up to their first kiss. He didn't kiss her until the 11th episode. There was one scene where I said, "this is an opportunity to let them really breathe here, Graham." They are two people who you rarely see talk about nothing and they had already begun this conversation, really only a couple of lines, and then Boyd says something like, "if I had long hair, who knows, maybe I'd have been a singer in a rock band." Just by saying that you see Boyd in a completely different way; he was a teenager up in his bedroom just like everybody else. He heard his Mom singing in the backyard, which was kind of the genesis of that conversation.

It's a beautiful moment and it's a moment where you can see two people start to fall in love. It's the most mundane portion of their day and in that world, in the world of Harlan County, it's a thing of beauty. I'm really happy with the story, really happy they went in that direction, and in this upcoming season it just gets deeper in a real way. The irony that these two people who have led such violent lives, especially Boyd, would find his salvation through love, is a testament to the core of humanity.

Al Norton: One of the things I love is how they seem like partners, like equals, with each other.

Walton Goggins: Yes, I agree with you. That continues in this season. At the core of their relationship what they have for each other is a healthy respect for the other's own space and privacy. When we started we were very, very specific to establish that in the second season. In his room he needs to take up as little space as possible. Whenever you walk into her kitchen everything needs to be done; he is making the smallest footprint possible in her house. He sits in one chair and if she's in a room he will go upstairs unless he's invited to sit down with her. It's so respectful that way. Those little details, that time when Ava came to the bedroom after Body left and the room is sparse, everything put away and the bed made, with just the one book he was reading.

Al Norton: Tell me a little bit about working with Jeremy Davies; to me there's something so admirable about an actor who is so willing to appear so unlikeable on screen.

Walton Goggins: Jeremy has had such a long and diverse career. I'd never met him but like most people I had been a fan of his work for more than 15 years and he is all that you would hope an actor of his capacity would be. He's as deep a well of a person as I have ever met in my life, as well read and as thoughtful and considerate and kind as you could ever hope. He's as much a lover of story as any actor I have ever worked with and having gone through this experience with him, gone through this journey with him, I'm really proud to say that he's a good friend.

Al Norton: Is it bittersweet at all that Rectify is moving forward but that you're not going to be a part of it? (Goggins starred in the original pilot for Rectify several years ago; Sundance ordered a first season of the show in October)

Walton Goggins: When you asked the question about how Boyd died in the Justified pilot I thought of Rectify; Justified was the woman I was sleeping with, Rectify was the woman I was married to. When Rectify didn't get picked up it was like having your wife leave you, but what I was left with was this alternate love of my life, and as fate would have it, Justified was where I was supposed to be. I do not have any remorse about not being able to play that character because it landed me the opportunity to play Boyd and continue to play Boyd.

Ray McKinnon (who wrote Rectify) is my best friend and we talk at length about so many things and I'm just happy for him and I'm happy for the actor who gets to play that role. I genuinely think it's one of the best roles on television and it's one of the best pilots that's been written in the last decade. It also highlights a subject matter that needs to be talked about, and that's the death penalty. You can be for it, you can be against it, and the show will present it in ways to see the plusses and the minuses and you'll be left to make up your own mind through the journey of one man.

Al Norton: I was not familiar with the show until recently but when I read about the lead – a man freed from death row after DNA evidence clears him from the murder charge he was convicted of – I immediately thought about how much I could see you in that role.

Walton Goggins: It's such a great part and was so close to my heart and it's a storyline I just feel down in my gut. One of the things that makes they way everything happened so good for me is that Boyd is as dark as you get, and as hard as the beginning of the second season was for him as a character and for me as an actor, there is such a levity to him and a roundedness – the drama in his life is rounded out with a fair amount of laughter – and he's just a rascal. It's a real refreshing change after playing Shane for seven years. Shane went through some dark shit and it was tough to go to work some days. I didn't want to go there but if you don't go there the audience won't go there. Whoever plays Daniel (the lead character in Rectify) is going to have to go there and what a lucky actor he will be.

Al Norton: Not that you haven't worked on some high quality projects before but does it feel different when you're on set on a Spielberg movie (Goggins has a role in Lincoln, set for release in December)?

Walton Goggins: Of course, because it's Steven Spielberg, and it feels different for a minute, until you get that handshake and that, "I'm so happy you are here" and then you feel like you're in the club. At that point it's not about being enamored by working with one of your heroes, or any number of your fellow cast members who you greatly admire. I've been a fan of John Hawkes' for years. And Tommy Lee Jones. I've never known him much but I've been a huge fan of his. I know pretty much every line in Cole Miner's Daughter. Sally Field? I'm from the South, so if you give me Coal Miner's Daughter and Places in the Heart I'm pretty much all set. But once you get in there and start to do the work it's not any different because we're all just trying to tell stories. The lead up almost killed me with anxiety, though, in a good way.

Al Norton: After Margo Martindale's incredible work in season two, the new villains on Justified certainly have big shoes to fill; can you tell me a little about what Neal (McDonough) and Mykelti (Williamson) bring to the show?

Walton Goggins: They have some big shoes to fill, for sure, but between the two of them we stopped the water from leaking. They're both juicy and authentic and original. They bring such a different kind of flavor to the show respectively. I've been a fan of Ti's for a long time and a casual friend with Neal forever and I was so looking forward to my first scene with them; I was chomping at the bit for it. I think I can tell you without giving anything away that I had my first scene with Ti on a bridge and I could just tell that it was working. Margo who? Just kidding, Margo (laughing). I knew it was good, it was real good. With Neal, he walked into the room for our scene wearing what he was wearing and I thought, "ok, this is for real." It was everything I had hoped it would it be.

That's the thing about Justified; the conversations with these actors, every actor who comes in from Jeremy to Margo to Neal to Ti to Nick Searcy, everyone one of these guys gets that when you're speaking Elmore-speak, you're saying one thing but meaning something else. That's the most interesting conversation you can have on screen and we get to do it on a daily basis.

Don't miss the season premiere of Justified, tonight at 10pm on FX