Now living in Miami, 15 years after leaving Kentucky behind, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is finding that being the father of 15-year-old girl (played by Olyphant’s real-life daughter, Vivian Olyphant) can be more challenging than dealing with bad guys, ensuring that a healthy work-life balance isn’t likely to ever happen. Finding himself in Detroit with violent sociopath Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook) in his crosshairs, Raylan is hunting a killer who is unpredictable and dangerous, and who cracks his cool exterior and rankles him just enough to make him determined to see it through to the end.
During this interview with Collider, Justified: City Primeval showrunners/executive producers Dave Andron and Michael Dinner (who also directed the first two episodes and the finale) talked about feeling the pressure of the success of the original series, weaving Raylan Givens into an Elmore Leonard story he wasn’t previously in, exploring this character at a different place in his life, only bringing back characters from the original series if it made absolute sense, what makes this bad guy different from other Justified bad guys, and that they would like to explore another chapter in this story and do another season.
This interview was conducted prior to the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Collider: I thought the original series ended perfectly, so I was surprised that there was going to be more Justified. As a result, my first question is, why do more?
MICHAEL DINNER: And we felt the pressure of that. We felt we did well in ending the show, but this, in a way, is its own thing. What we feel good about is that it totally is the show that we know, and we catapulted our guy into this story, but in some ways, it’s a more grown up story and a different story, in the next phase of his life. We feel pretty good about that.
You took a story that Raylan Givens is not in, and you wove him into it. Why did you make the decision to tell this story, when he wasn’t originally in it?
DAVE ANDRON: Part of the genesis of it, frankly, was Tim being on the set with Quentin Tarantino, and Tarantino being like, “This would be a really cool season of Justified, if you guys could figure out a way to do it.” When you look at that book, it’s early Elmore Leonard crime novel writing, and Ray Cruz has a little bit of Raylan in him.
DINNER: He’s the literary granddaddy to Raylan, in a way. It was his first Detroit novel, after writing Westerns. It’s a postmodern western that’s Detroit crime fiction. But in a way, Raymond Cruz was a literary granddaddy. We love the characters in the book. We also wanted to do service to the book, and then take our character and catapult him into the story. We like the idea of Raylan being a fish out of water and being in this world because Detroit’s a character in the piece. But as we started working on it, we weren’t trying to recapture the past, were trying to recapture the feeling we had doing the show, of working together, and tonally what. We also take our guy, who’s in a different place in his life. We all look down the road, as we’re growing up and getting older, and the road is getting shorter. This is the next phase in his life. We thought there was an existential story to tell and an entertaining story to tell.
ANDRON: We never really got to examine Raylan, as a father. We got a lot of him as a son and what that meant, and Harlan being passed down through him. But now, he’s really a father. He was a father for about 10 seconds of the original. When you have a kid, you start to see the things in yourself, where you’re like, “Oh, shit, I thought I had maybe purged that or gotten a handle on that, but there it is in my kid, and I’ve gotta face it, head on.” That was really attractive, in thinking, why now and what’s different about Raylan?
Knowing that everyone watching, who was a fan of the original series, is going to be wondering about and asking which characters might come back, was that an immediate conversation with this? Was that something you always thought about and talked about?
ANDRON: We talked a lot about all the other character, who we could we bring in, what could be organic, and what serves the story, which is where Raylan is.
DINNER: We started from a place of, “We’re not bringing anybody in. We’re gonna take our guy, and we’re gonna be bold and put him in this story.” But then, as we started working, we said, “Well, we could do this.” We went down a lot of roads, trying to see what we could do, but what we didn’t wanna do was cheapen what we had done. Also, in this book that Elmore wrote, City Primeval, there were these great characters. We wanted to be able to adapt those characters, create new characters, and make this place a character, so we had a pretty full world. But if it worked in organically with, “What’s Raylan facing?,” and if it made sense to put a character in, okay. But we didn’t wanna be like, “Let’s bring back the ghost of Mags Bennett because everybody loves her.” We didn’t wanna go down that road. If it organically grew out of the story, then we did it.
Did you have to consider who would be available, or would everyone just have been on board?
DINNER: Anybody who didn’t die in the show, including some of the ones who did die, were volunteering to be in it.
ANDRON: When you think about, “What’s Loretta doing?,” Kaitlyn Dever had a George Clooney movie, so maybe Loretta wouldn’t be around.
DINNER: Although Margo [Martindale] did call and say, “You know, I could be a ghost. I could be my brother. I could be my sister.” We examined all that stuff.
Can you even keep those appearances a secret? Is that something you are at least hoping for?
ANDRON: I guess we’ll find out.
DINNER: It is hard [to keep surprises]. We love the eight episode and the little story we told. We’re hoping people tune in, and some characters will pop up, or not pop up. I think people will respond to the characters that are there. They’re interesting, and the dynamics are interesting, and Detroit is an interesting place. Whether it’s Sweetie (Vondie Curtis-Hall) and Carolyn (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), or whether it’s the Detroit homicide detectives, they’re really good actors and they’re really interesting characters. Hopefully, people will respond to that, and then there will be Easter eggs, or not.
Justified has had some really, really great bad guys throughout its run. Some of my favorite characters on TV have been bad guys on Justified. How was it to figure out the levels of Clement Mansell, who just seems crazy, from the beginning?
DINNER: He’s different from some of the other bad guys. In the first seven years of the show, Raylan went home, and there were people that he was familiar with. They have what I call an amoral code. But this guy is a nihilist. He’s so unpredictable. Because Raylan is a little bit older, he doesn’t understand his code, and that’s what makes him dangerous. He’s one of the great bad guys that Elmore created. Crazy or unpredictable is a good description. And the great thing about Elmore’s bad guys is that sometimes they’re redeemable or embraceable, and sometimes they’re just so interesting, and I find this guy interesting. I don’t know what he’s gonna do next. That’s what makes him scary. The question for Raylan is, existentially, has he slowed down?
The other thing you’ll see, as you go along with these episodes, there’s a really interesting dynamic and relationship between this bad guy and Sweetie, the guy who runs the bar, who’s a partner/father figure/compatriot. There’s a lot at stake in their relationship. It’s an interesting dynamic between a white guy who, on the surface, is that guy, and this guy who is Detroit and who’s this Black dude that’s the heart of Detroit. It’s pretty interesting.
Justified has also always had fascinating female characters, and this new season is no exception to that.
DINNER: We have Carolyn. In a way, it’s three characters on this collision course – Mansell, Carolyn and Raylan. We haven’t really seen her before in our world. She’s tough and formidable and smart, and she’s of this place. That was cool for us, to be able to develop that kind of character. And [Aunjanue] is fantastic. She’s amazing.
ANDRON: We got everyone we wanted. Those were all our first choices. They all said, yes.
Are you hoping to do this again? Now that you’ve done this, is the goal to do more seasons?
ANDRON: If there’s a reason to tell a story, we are a little bit cognizant of what we did before and we’re not wanting to just go and take a victory lap. I don’t think we would do that. But we all had fun. We just love playing in the Elmore Leonard sandbox. And so, yeah, if the opportunity presented itself and we knew what the story was, we’d probably go and do some more.
DINNER: There was one story, which was six or seven years of the show, about whether you can you go home again. That was the first chapter of Raylan’s story. This is a different chapter. He’s got a daughter who’s 15, going on 16. She’s gonna be emancipated in a couple of years, and he doesn’t have much time with her. He only has so many years as a Marshal, before he has to go through mandatory retirement. He’s at a transition, personally, and he’s at a transition with what’s going on in the world and the country. We didn’t get didactic about, but certainly there’s a reason to tell this story, at this time in his life. It’s just us rationalizing. There could be a third chapter. If people like what they see and tune in, it would be great to have that opportunity.
Justified: City Primeval airs on Tuesday nights on FX and is available to stream at Hulu.
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