“I like to think there has been some growth.”
That was actor Timothy Olyphant in New York last month as he reflected on his career path from a TriBeCa sidewalk. He was specifically referring to the task of reprising previous roles, which he first did several years ago in the 2019 revival of the film Deadwood.
Now comes Justified: City Primeval, an eight-episode limited series premiering July 18 on FX. In it, Olyphant returns to what is arguably his best-known character: Raylan Givens, the Stetson Sporting Deputy US Marshal who hosted the Kentucky crime drama Justified for six seasons.
The new show follows Raylan to Detroit on a fish-out-of-water adventure starring a murderous villain (Boyd Holbrook) and a sharp-tongued but seductive attorney played by Aunjanue Ellis. The creators describe it as the existential development of a character created by crime grandmaster Elmore Leonard, who begins to realize that he can’t hunt down killers forever and is running out of opportunities to connect with his teenage daughter.
“It’s a mature, mature version of the show that we did,” said Michael Dinner, who created the limited series with Dave Andron. Both are former writers and executive producers of Justified, which ended on FX in 2015.
The creators and Olyphant, who also executive produces City Primeval, hope to bring Raylan back for at least one more series after this one. But first they’ll find out if people are still interested in the character or in Justified without the original series’ impressive hillbilly setting and colorful criminals played by Walton Goggins and Margo Martindale.
“With all due respect to our original cast, who I loved, adored and missed, it was really a fun experience to be able to be with all these new cast members and still feel like we’re doing our show,” Olyphant said. “That feels spot on, but I don’t know, it could be a total failure.”
While he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the possibility of damaging the legacy of his most famous creation, it is in part an effect of his affect. In conversation, Olyphant is easy-going and quick-witted—traits he brings to his work, but which also belie another of his defining traits: a smoldering intensity.
This combination proved perfect for the darkly funny, morally somber world of Justified. Olyphant’s appearance on the series kick-started his previously unsuccessful career, which in turn made his future prospects less dependent on the success of the Justified revival.
Olyphant happened to be in New York to screen another curious crime thriller, Full Circle, in which he plays a Manhattanite with secrets who has married into the wealthy family of a celebrity chef played by Dennis Quaid. (It also stars Claire Danes, Jharrel Jerome and CCH Pounder.) The gripping six-episode series, which premieres on Max on Thursday, centers on a botched kidnapping with international ramifications.
Full Circle was directed by Steven Soderbergh, the latest in a roster of talented people who Olyphant has long wanted to work with and has now done. Others include Quentin Tarantino, who cast Olyphant to play 1960s TV cowboy James Stacy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and David O. Russell, who hired him to appear in Amsterdam. (2022) playing a disfigured racquet. Kenneth Lonergan made him the focus of his acclaimed play Hold On to Me Darling (2016).
“You can put Larry David on the list,” Olyphant said, referring to his performance as the scruffy groom on 2020’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be doing this, but I will.” do.” Showing up for this guy every day.”
There was also a brief role as a Star Wars lawyer in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and a longer one as a Mormon US Marshal in Fargo. He played a zombie’s husband in the horror comedy Santa Clarita Diet and himself in two different sitcoms: The Good Place and The Grinder. Earlier this year he had a memorable role as a grizzled tour manager with terrible hair on Daisy Jones & the Six.
Soderbergh, who said he’d wanted to cast Olyphant for years, called him “the best example of a seasoned pro who can give you anything you want.”
“That’s the best thing I can say about anyone,” he added.
The afternoon after the screening of “Full Circle,” Olyphant reclined in a metal chair outside a TriBeCa cafe and marveled at the company he’s keeping these days.
“To be with Steven Soderbergh last night and to look at something he did that I’m a part of, it just means the world,” he said. “I don’t know why it took me so long to get there, but it’s really nice to be there now.”
Now 55, Olyphant retains an athlete’s build — he’s just returned from a swim at Battery Park’s Asphalt Green — but his hair is mostly gray. With the revival of old roles, a new phase of life has entered for him: his three children with Alexis Knief, his wife of over 30 years, are now grown and one has followed their father not only into show business but also into the world of ” justified”. Vivian Olyphant plays Raylan’s daughter, Willa, in the revival. “You can’t beat nepotism,” he said wryly.
Olyphant wasn’t sure if he wanted to reprise his “Deadwood” role as Sheriff Seth Bullock. (Bullock received a promotion for the film and added another marshal to Olyphant’s resume.) Once on set, however, he realized just how much the show meant to him. It also gave him his final opportunity to work with David Milch, one of television’s greatest writers, whom Olyphant admires deeply. (Milk has since entered an assisted living facility for Alzheimer’s care.)
“I don’t know what I was so afraid of,” he said. “It was very moving for everyone involved.”
But Olyphant always thought he would play Raylan again. “It seemed like the kind of character that could age well,” he said.
The new series updates Leonard’s 1980 novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, one of his most popular books. When Raylan joins the Detroit Police Department in a case involving a string of murders, a psychopathic aspiring singer, Albanian gangsters, corrupt cops and a corrupt judge, he’s frequently the odd man on his own show.
“I think they wanted this clash, which is why they sent it to one of the blackest cities in the country,” said Ellis, who plays a defender in the story’s focus. Other stars include Victor Williams, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Marin Ireland.
During the original series of Justified, Olyphant was known as an occasionally fastidious Leonard purist, who insisted the series stay true to the author’s dry wit and underhanded emotional complexity. That hasn’t changed – Ellis said Olyphant carried around a tattered copy of City Primeval on set “like it was the Bible” – although Olyphant did hint the terms of the engagement had evolved.
“I really enjoyed working with the authors,” he said. “They picked up where we left off, except this time nobody was throwing things. They were all used to mine [expletive].” (Dinner, who also directed several episodes, said, “He was a great collaborator.”
All productions have ups and downs, but this show was more extreme than most. In the Plus column, Olyphant called working with his daughter, who is studying drama at the William Esper Studio in New York, “one of the greatest experiences of my adult life.”
“It’s so special and challenging to walk the line between trying to get a scene and trying to be a parent,” he said. (“He sure did take a lot of notes,” said 20-year-old Vivian. “But we had loads of fun between takes.”)
Not so great: the night the show, which was mostly filmed in Chicago, was filmed in a park and the cast and crew found themselves in the middle of an actual gunfight. They all dove for cover as two cars sped down the road towards them and passed them while they exchanged automatic fire.
“You could hear the bullets ricocheting off the front bumper’s rear bumper: tink, tink, tink,” Olyphant recalled. No one on production was hurt, but everyone was shaken.
“My heart is with the people who live in these neighborhoods because that’s just not a way to live,” he said.
So does Raylan age well? Is there growth? Viewers must draw their own conclusions.
“The street in front of him is a lot shorter than the street behind,” Dinner said. “We take him to a place at the end of the story where he’s making some decisions about his life.”
Olyphant’s path is also getting shorter, but the downside is that “the game has gotten easier,” he said. “I realize this is all a joke, just getting away with it.” His co-stars say that despite his penchant for downplaying the job, his enthusiasm for it is obvious.
“He’s obviously very experienced now,” said Danes. “But there’s still that feeling of dizziness and searching, which is wonderful.”
Olyphant, in turn, draws inspiration from those with even more experience, from whose example that growth can be its own reward. Co-stars like Quaid, he said, “seem to be having even more fun than I am.”
“So if they have me and they keep asking me to the dance,” he said, “I guess I’ll keep showing up.”