Justified City Primeval showrunners on Walton Goggins’ return as Boyd and plans for future seasons
(Justified City Primeval) Just when Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) thought he was out of the U.S. Marshals Service, his real archnemesis pulled him back in. Or does he?
Justified: City Prime’s season ended on a massive cliffhanger when career lawman Rylan decided to retire before becoming a marshal to spend more time with his daughter Willie (Timothy’s 20-year-old real-life daughter (played by Vivian Oliphant). But while he’s relaxing on his boat with Willa, he can’t ignore a news alert about an unknown inmate escaping from prison, just as he receives an urgent call from the marshal’s office. Is.
Viewers know exactly what the call is about, as earlier scenes revealed the surprise return of original Justified baddie Boyd (Walton Goggins), who faked an illness and killed a prison guard. Inclined to help in the break. Now Boyd is out in the world again, and there’s no way Raylan is going to let him run free. Or can he? Will Raylan even pick up the phone? And if he does, will he change his mind about early retirement to hunt down the man he always comes back to? And does that mean there is going to be more justification in the future?
Justified City Primeval: Where did the idea to bring Walton back and bring Boyd back in such a big way in the finale come from?
We’ve got to get Walton back.” Our biggest concern, and what we didn’t want to do, is the hackneyed approach that, halfway through the season, Raylan is having trouble with a friend, Hannibal Lecter in prison. , and Boyd would say, “Here’s what you do.” We didn’t want to do that. Dave’s pitch was, “Let’s finally bring him in and have fun with him.” It wasn’t, “Let’s get set. It was really meant to add to Raylan’s complexity: Is he going to pick up that phone or not? Is he really going to retire or not?
Walton was obviously such a big part of the original [series] and not seeing him at all felt like a drag, and yet it was really Raylan’s story. So how do you bring it back in a way that also helps you put a real exclamation point on Raylan’s story? It’s just that Elmore Leonard puts down his badge and gun and says, “I think I’m done,” the fun, cool, Elmore version is, “You did it? You think so.” Yes? Well, now your Shahab Saqib is out of jail. What will you do now?” It’s just the fun of the dance that will go on.
That was a big part of the discussion at the end of the original justification – we threw around everything, Rylan could have died, Boyd could have died, but in the end, it was like, this isn’t Elmore. Elmore’s stuff is fun and the dancing will go on, so we made sure the dancing went on.
Dinner: It’s fun, and it’s a character beat for him. See, we didn’t do Justified, we did a little feature film called City Primeval, and Raylan is in it. Our first inclination was that we wouldn’t bring anyone back from the original unless it was formally understood. And as we worked on it and finished it, it felt good. It felt so much like if Elmore was still with us, I think he’d be smiling about it.
What was that initial conversation with Walton about returning to the Finals?
Andron: I just remember the initial call where we came up with the idea and pitched it. He was really excited about the jump.
DINNER: And we sent him the pages. Dave and I were writing the pilot for the first episode and sent him the pages at the same time because we wanted to show him what we were thinking. We’ve said it before, we felt like we hit the landing with the original show, and we wondered what Walton would say about it. Because he was done, he moved on – he’s doing 27 projects at once. And what would Tim say about it? Those were the first two calls we made. And then once Walton loved the pages and Tim loved them, each in the same reaction. It was, “Let’s do it for the right reasons.”
How did you manage to keep it a secret? I can’t remember the last time such a great comeback wasn’t already damaged or leaked.
Andron: The emails FX was sending out with the press ban were pretty aggressively written. And look, poor Walton had to lie through his teeth. We had to do a little work here and there, but because of the strike there wasn’t as much press—we didn’t have to stand on the red carpet and [lie] to everybody about how it didn’t feel right [ him for CitiPrime to bring back]. But Walton, at the time, the actors hadn’t hit yet, and he was doing all this press for Stone, and he called us after two days of press and was like, “I only did two days. spent lying to every journalist’s face. About the planet saying ‘it wasn’t time yet.'” So a lot of credit goes to him for sticking to his guns.
Another thing that probably helped us was that we wrote it initially just to make sure Walton would be on board and excited, but then we had to push the film because of his schedule. He also had to shoot halfway through the ban. For a long list of reasons, we ended up using the prison in Pittsburgh even though we were shooting in Chicago, so we took this little splinter unit there and we shot it in a day and a half. It wasn’t even two full days of filming. It probably helped us – it wasn’t like we were in town and people saw him and our whole big crew. This prison, 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, had this small unit, so it was easy to keep it quiet.
What was it like to have Walton back on set as Boyd after all these years
Andron: It was great. Our director/producer, Mr. Michael Dinner, got COVID-19 and couldn’t be there, which was a huge drag, but I went out and it was amazing. The first time he went on that set with full Boyd Crowder hair and full vibe, surprisingly, it didn’t take him long at all to get back in. It was a real treat to see him get back into it. And then I haven’t really talked about it, but I got my wife, whose name is Ahna O’Reilly, to play the female prison guard because I needed someone really good who Does it, and doesn’t blow it. We didn’t want someone who was completely recognizable because then you’d look at him and you’d see a twist coming.
She agreed to do it, which was a blast for me. The last stage was the stuff on the road, we were losing light and it was a really tough moment. And then I realized after that first take that I was about to see Walton kiss his wife. I was like, “Oh…right. I really forgot I was going to see my wife make out with Walton Goggins today.” But I have to say, if it was any actor in the world, I felt right about it being Walton.
DINNER: And I was actually looking forward to watching Walton Goggins kiss your wife, but I had to work long distance. Long story short, we lost the ability to shoot at any prison in the state of Illinois because the covid was going so fast and they didn’t have the personnel to cover, and this happened a week and a half before we were supposed to shoot. was . And we had to pivot really fast because Walton only had a small window to shoot.
Ironically, the roadwork, and the bridge for that matter, was in the original pilot of Justified. And they were ready to close that bridge and tear it down in about a week or two, so it was luck that we could go back to where we started and make that escape over that road and that bridge. But was shot. The stars aligned, which is part of the theme of Elmore’s stuff.
Andron: There was actually a moment at the beginning, where Elmore came to see the pilot, and watching Walton as Boyd, he said something like, “I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth, but I love hearing him say that.” We wanted to keep his spirit alive where it’s, “Has he changed? Could he? Maybe he did. Oh no, no, no, it’s the same Boyd.”
We never see Boyd and Rylan together on screen in the finale, which felt like a huge tease if we never saw it come to fruition. Was there ever a version of the finale where they came face-to-face?
Andron: No, what you see is what we had a long time ago, and it hasn’t really changed. It was always about him getting out, and then Raylan was on the boat with his daughter and feeling relieved to move on, and then the phone call. We didn’t really think we’d be doing more of it. It really felt like, if it’s all we do, it’s fun. And for the fans, it doesn’t seem necessary for it to just end like that, so if we don’t do more, everyone can have some fun thinking about, “Does Raylan pick up that phone? Does he Go after him? Does he ever go after Boyd again?” It was felt to be enjoyable for the fans.