Walton Goggins and Timothy Olphyant’s characters dug coal together, for crying out loud. They went through decades of life together, and the actors lived those moments for six seasons. It was an intense time, for sure, and especially with the high-pressure schedule of a Hollywood shoot, it’s hard to imagine having a smooth ride every moment of the gig. Still, this duo occupies a soft spot in Justified fans’ minds, so yes, there was a bit of an uproar when Goggins revealed to The Independent that they “weren’t talking” by the end of the series and did not 110% swoon in each other’s footsteps for every moment of the FX production.
Fast forward to Olyphant — who had only recently merrily posed with Goggins near the beach in Thailand (where both HBO’s The White Lotus and FX’s Alien have been shooting) — having no inkling that this talk was afoot but did (laughingly) tell Vanity Fair that, sure, “We’d get really frustrated with each other.” This would only be the case because Walton tended to tell the writers that Boyd Crowder “would never do that,” and that generated some finale fiction. Everything was water under the holler, so to speak, but of course, this turned into a controversy because people love Raylan and Boyd and want everything to be alright.
The public conversation has now been kicked back to Goggins, who seemed “perplexed,” according to LA Times:
Said Goggins: “It’s so crazy. There is no feud.”
Pausing a few moments, he continued: “The ending of that show was hard emotionally, and people had different ways of dealing with it. It was a difficult goodbye and there were moments when we didn’t see eye to eye. But I would expect that from any long experience you care about. How can you go through an experience like that and not have a disagreement?
“The truth is … Tim is a dear friend of mine, and someone I love like a brother. I respect him as an artist and an actor, probably more than anyone. He’s still untapped at what he has to offer. I love the man. And I know he loves me.”
This surely only became a thing because people care, which just goes to show that, yes, we do need Raylan to chase Boyd in a second season of Justified: City Primeval. But yes, these two are just fine, y’all.
(Via LA Times)
