JUSTIFIED Group Interview

(Jacob Pitts, Erica Tazel, Joelle Carter, Nick Searcy, Walton Goggins, producer and star, Timothy Olyphant, and the showrunner and executive producer Graham Yost)

QUESTION: I have heard that this season is not so much about one overarcing villain, so could you say what it is about?

GRAHAM YOST: It's a mystery. I mean, it's a mystery to me. I have no idea.

No. We stumbled upon something. There's an old story I'd heard that's nicknamed "The Bluegrass Conspiracy," and I knew that it involved, in the first episode, someone whose parachute didn't work and they landed somewhere in the South -- I believe it was actually Tennessee -- but with a lot of cocaine on them. So that sparked something in us, and we thought it would be interesting to sort of play that out. What could have happened 30 years ago that would have an impact on events today, and of course, it ties into Arlo and Raylan's family and all of that, and Boyd's family, Bo, the late, great Bo Crowder, so that's what kicked it off. We really thought that would be a fun thing to try this year instead of just doing another "big bad."

QUESTION: Just what are the logistical differences in doing a season long-arcing mystery since that's done before?

GRAHAM YOST: I'll tell you, it's difficult. I mean, it's not -- it's something you get into and you go, "Oh, this will be fine," and then you realize, "Wait a second." And it's taken a lot of thinking, because normally we just sit in the writers' room and play cards.

No. But it has been a problem to figure out the puzzle, and I think we've done a pretty good job. We knew we needed to piece it out and let there be -- I mean, if you've watched the show, we try to do episodes a little more standalone at the first part of the season and then get into the big story for the second half or the last two-thirds. So it was sort of parsing out the bits of the mystery for the first four episodes, and by the fifth episode, everything is pretty much focused on that.

QUESTION: And does it carry out all the way to the end of the season?

GRAHAM YOST: Yes and no. The mystery actually gets solved in the ninth episode. But then there are problems that come from the solving of it, and that plays out for the rest of the season.

QUESTION: Mr. Goggins and Mr. Olyphant, how would you describe your characters’ relationship to each other this season? You guys were friends at the core, but obviously you have issues with each other. But it just seems like you'll always be friends. If you could talk about your characters’ approach to each other this season.

1

WALTON GOGGINS: There's one line that Boyd's never said in the previous three seasons that he says this season. It's really interesting to me and an indication as to where they've kind of come in this relationship, and Boyd looks at Raylan at one point, and he says, "Raylan, I don't like you." And it's the first time he's ever really kind of said it that way, so I don't know. And over the course of their relationship, Boyd has seen their friendship as one thing and Raylan has seen it as something else. But at the end of this season, they may see it the same way, and that is that they don't like each other. We'll see where it goes from there.

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: We shot, on my side after he said that, a couple different things, one where I just teared up.

Another one where I said, "Don't speak." I did one where I said. "You're lying. I can tell you're lying." You know, we've often talked about this. I never thought of them as friends in that we've never shot a scene where one of them said to the other one, "Dude, we should just have drinks." Which is what tends to be what my friends and we tend to say. We say, "You know, we should grab a drink later," but I've never seen that scene, so I just assume they were, are not friends.

GRAHAM YOST: One of the decisions we made this year is in the first four episodes, Boyd and Raylan don't see each other. Their paths don't cross.

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: We call each other, though, and say "Hey, we should get together for drinks." I want to let that go.

GRAHAM YOST: We need to kind of explore other things in the relationship. We didn't want to do the same scenes that we've done in the past of Raylan going to see Boyd or Boyd going to see Raylan. We wanted to mix that up a little bit.

QUESTION: There are a lot of male antiheroes on cable, but Raylan is not an antihero. He's a flawed hero. If you two, Timothy and Graham, could talk about that a little bit, because many things he does are tremendously heroic. He risks his life all the time, and his flaws are fascinating too. So I guess first of all, Timothy, what are the flaws that you find the most fun about doing him, and at the end of the day, do you consider yourself playing a very heroic character?

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: I wish I had a smart answer. I don't know. I mean, the fun about -- the game that we seem to play with the character is the trick you're playing an iconic character, and you can only go so far, so the key is to try to figure out how to throw rocks at that guy and how to make the situation complicated enough that that character remains a mystery and remains interesting, and that's the trick, because without that, it just looks bored. And I can't tell you what a lovely thing it is to be in the thick of Season 4 and still find the job so terrifically interesting and entertaining and engaging, not only as an actor on the show, but as an audience and a fan of the show.

2

QUESTION: So let me ask Graham, then, the same thing because -- kind of what he says is, is because the character is so laconic, the more troubles you can give him, that he remains calm during them, the funnier it is in a way. What's the fun of throwing -- how much fun do you have throwing bad things at him, and what do you find --

GRAHAM YOST: We have a lot of fun throwing things at Tim. Sometimes bricks, bats. No. We -- there was a clue back in the pilot when Winona says, "You're the angriest man I've ever known," so we sort of keep that as a little bit of a guiding point, a target, to try and bring that out occasionally.

We also like Raylan to, then, on the other side, have affection for people you wouldn't imagine he would have affection for. So you just try and mix him up. And a lot -- we talk about it all the time, and this goes for all the characters. Who would it be fun to see them with? Who would it be fun to see Raylan go up against? What's the history? What's the problem? Who is it -- you know -- in this first four episodes, we have Boyd against this creature, Billy. We thought that would be an interesting conflict. There's stuff that comes out in the second conflict about Art. You find out there's something going on in his life. There's something going on in Rachel's life. I was just talking to Jacob today about an episode I just saw where we're introducing something in Gutterson's life, which also is something -- you get into that, but in the fourth season, you know, that the stories have opened up to us a little bit more.

But just one last thing on Raylan. The reason I -- I love Elmore Leonard, and when I read that short story, that novella, Fire in the Hole, I thought, "We've got a shot at having the coolest character on television." And I just love a guy that doesn't yell very much, you know, and that's really fun to write for.

QUESTION: Speaking of which, last year Elmore Leonard released a novel in concurrence with your season that had some of the storylines in your season. It's sort of a chicken and the egg question. Which came first? Did you have -- did you steal the storyline from him? Did he -- did you tell him what you were doing?

GRAHAM YOST: That all started with Tim. Remember, you were on the set the first season. You met Elmore, and you said, "Why don't you write another Raylan story?"

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: Fucking genius.

GRAHAM YOST: Truly. Because Elmore sort of said, "Well, I'm not going to do anything in terms of the show. I'm not going to read scripts or write" -- yeah, This is how I can contribute.” And it's one of these weird things where, you know, in Fire in the Hole, Boyd dies, and he's not dead yet. And in Elmore's book Raylan, there's Boyd Crowder and there's Rachel Brooks and Tim Gutterson, who didn't exist in the short story.

So it was this interesting back-and-forth, and he told us -- and in talking to Greg Sutter, who works

3

closely with Elmore, it was basically that we could hang it up and strip it for parts. So in the second season, we took what was Pervis Crowe and turned that into Mags Bennett but kept two of her kids, added a third. In the third season we finally did the kidney story. We figured out our way that we thought we could use elements of what Elmore had done and put a spin on it because let's throw Dewey at that.

And there's stuff this year. In our seventh episode, there's a big chunk of the book that makes it into -- makes it into the show. So it was a really interesting back-and-forth, and, you know, I think we all agree the best review we've ever gotten on this show is the fact that Elmore gets a kick out of it.

QUESTION: You seem to channel him so amazingly, and obviously he doesn't have a whole lot of input in the show. Can you just sort of discuss the simpatico that you share with him in terms of --

GRAHAM YOST: Tim has boiled it down. In an Elmore scene, what's going to happen?

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: Someone's either going to get fucked or they're going to get fucked. That's the best-case scenario. We try to include that in as many scenes as possible.

QUESTION: Joelle, can you talk a little bit about how your character's changed through the season? She seems even tougher.

JOELLE CARTER: I think that's the joy of playing Ava is because they've given me beautiful growth through the seasons. First season, Ava's just kind of freed herself from a life that no one would want to live, and she thinks Raylan's her savior. She goes full-out into the world and discovers it's maybe a little too big for her. She gets crushed by Raylan. And then second season, she's kind of reinventing herself, and she meets up with Boyd, who has reinvented himself, and they meet each other again as new people. They get to fall in love in Season 3. Season 4, she's in a great place for about an episode and then -- and then they bring more -- I think, more moral issues for her to have to deal with this season, and along the way she grows strength through, I think, mainly gaining respect from Boyd and having that love, and that's something she never had, especially from a man.

QUESTION: And can you -- Walton and Joelle, can you guys talk about -- sorry. Can you talk about that relationship a little bit and how it develops over the season?

WALTON GOGGINS: How it develops over this season, I think it's, you know, this season is another step, a significant step in the evolution of their relationship. You know, for me, these are people that come from very violent backgrounds, and in the irony that love will and is the great redeemer for them is something that is very, very special to me and kind of grounds me in this world. And fortunately, I think for Boyd or for this character, Boyd Crowder, everything going forward, and I think you will see that in this season more than you've ever seen it, is in the service of protecting the thing that he finally can really believe in, you know. It's a guy who lives in the extremes, and finally he's come to a place of kind

4

of equilibrium, and that is his love for this woman. And I actually said this in an interview last week, that if you really look at it, and you take out the fact that Boyd and Ava kill people, and you kind of look at their relationship, I would put it up against, like, any great relationship that's working today. It's two people that respect each other and have compassion for each other, that have respect for each other, that listen to each other, that take each other's counsel, and at the end of the day, you know, they put each other first, and I think it's as beautiful as the love stories I've seen on television, growing out of a very violent kind of plant, you know. It's a beautiful flower. So I'm very -- that's one of the most -- things that I'm most passionate about on this show, is this relationship, and hopefully ultimately where it goes. Joelle?

JOELLE CARTER: I hope I survive to stay in this relationship with you.

QUESTION: Nick, art seems to really enjoy getting out from behind his desk a little more in these first couple episodes. But I'm wondering, too, if his connection -- if there's something else in this cold case that is driving -- driving him to want to be part of it more?

NICK SEARCY: Yes, there is. I don't want to reveal what it is, but yeah. He has sort of a personal connection to it, and, you know, I think the getting out behind the desk thing, I think Art, like most people who get to my age, every once in a while they still want to prove themselves, prove that they still can do what they used to do. Whether they can or not is a big question. But I think that's some of the motivation, is to show it's not over yet.

QUESTION: Graham, Elmore Leonard sort of flightily questioned him. They say that a short story is usually ideally suited for a movie treatment and that a novel works best as a miniseries, like "The Stand," you know, the Stephen King thing. What was it about Way Down in a Hole [sic] as a short story that made you think this could actually be an ongoing, long-running series that could last four years or more?

GRAHAM YOST: The big thing was I just had a deal at Sony and I just had to do something, so I felt it better be a series. No. It was Raylan and then -- Raylan and Art. I like that dynamic. As I said, we killed Boyd in the pilot and then quickly saw that we didn't want to do that, and that gave us, "Okay. That's interesting. Boyd is this dark mirror. That's someplace to go.” We were lucky enough to get Natalie Zea to play this, basically, one scene in the pilot, and the lovely Billy Ragsdale to play the beleaguered Gary. That also gave us a place to go for a couple seasons. So I knew that. And then coming up with Rachel and Tim, I thought, okay. Now we've got a world.

Marshals, really interesting work. I felt that would be cool, and also Kentucky as a place where I hadn't seen a show be set before. So all of those things combined. As I said before, it came down to the guy in the hat that I just thought that that character would be really fun to write for. And, you know, that notion that he doesn't yell except to warn people from danger, but it's just that's a really fun character because it's not expected. We're just used to all these years of cop shows and stuff of people yelling at each other, and I thought it would be really fun to show somebody that doesn't do that, and it works in

5

a world where none of them yell. They're all very professional. I like that too.

WALTON GOGGINS: Can I just jump in here really quick? I just wanted to say I think what these writers do is unbelievable because, you know, it's a blank page that they start with, and these scenarios that, kind of, are put to paper, and we get a chance to read them, and then, ultimately, we get to film them. I was doing this scene recently with Tim, and it's -- when this show is at its best -- I knew, over the course of this scene, that somebody was going to die, but the conversation went in a completely different direction. And we were all just kind of sitting there, waiting for someone to die, and someone ultimately died. And the way it kind of happened and the way it happened through Marshal Givens' eyes and through his actions, kind of figuring out what was going on in the scene, and he was ahead of the curve, it was -- being in the scene was so fascinating to me because I didn't see what ultimately was going to happen even though I knew it was going to happen. And that's -- that's Elmore Leonard, and that's what the writers are so adept at doing week to week and what Tim, you know, really, kind of, keeps our course in that -- in that way.

QUESTION: Graham, you mentioned storylines coming up for Rachel and for Tim. How do you think you've done in developing those two characters over three-plus years and what would you like to do going forward with those two?

GRAHAM YOST: Well, I would think both Erica and Jacob would say, because they want to keep their jobs, that I've done a great job, but no. You know, they've been underserved. There's no question. And, you know, they are both fantastic performers, and we think the characters are really fun. But a lot of it was finding how those characters work on the show. And, you know, again, back to Tim, but Tim is incredibly generous and will -- he's not generous. That's not the right word. He sees the possibilities. He's like, "Well, I'm” -- back in Season 1, when he was off, looking for Rawley Pike in California. "Let's bring Rachel along," you know, "because then we can go back and forth. We can find out a little bit more about her." And so we try to do that a lot more. We know that it's fun when Rachel is spending time with Tim.

Our fourth episode this season has some great Rachel/Tim stuff. Rachel Raylan. And similarly, in the second episode, which you've seen, the original plan was it was just Raylan and Art who would go looking for the Truth family. And Tim said, "Ah, let's throw Gutterson in there, too.” And it became really a fun dynamic, especially that scene in the car and the scene with the family. So, again, it's that combining thing which is fun to do. But to give them their own stories is something that we are, you know, really doing more for the first time this season, and it's time to do it. And, you know, we know the audience wants it, and we want it. So we found room for it.

6

QUESTION: Well, going off of that, are you sort of surprised that you've reached this point, and it still is one of those things where you don't necessarily think to put them in the scene, where you go, "Okay. These other two characters, they are -- sure. Let's send Tim, or let's send Rachel there"?

GRAHAM YOST: Sometimes. You know, other times it's really driven by it because we know what Rachel wants and we know what Gutterson wants, and so it's pretty clear right from the beginning of the episode. And you'll see those things happen inthe season. But, listen, yeah, the focus again is generally always on the guy in the hat and, you know, also on Boyd and his storyline. So it's a fairly big world, and then we've got our bad guys. And that's one of the things is that, in Elmore's world, you spend time with the bad guys. So there's, you know, a third of the show right there. So it's, you know -- that's part of the job, though.

QUESTION: Graham, how did losing Natalie to “The Following” affect any planned storylines you had for Winona or for Raylan this season?

GRAHAM YOST: It didn't really affect it. We were able to make a deal, and she was happy to make it, where she carved out – she can do three or four episodes for us, something like that. So you'll see her in Episode 5, and you'll see her again hopefully a couple of times in the season. And part of that was driven by we just couldn't imagine why Winona was still hanging by Raylan if this life is this dangerous and it's not what she wanted. And it also gave us the chance to have Raylan, you know, be a ladies' man. I don't understand it. The ladies like him. I don't know why. Was that just mean?

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: No, no. I thought you were talking about the character.

QUESTION: When I watch this, I always think I'm deep into the Kentucky woods, and I feel like “A Winter's Bone” where they actually filmed out in the middle of the woods and things like that. You guys actually film it in California? Is that right?

GRAHAM YOST: Yes.

QUESTION: So tell me, just for the actors, to get this deep into feeling like you are there, what do you do to just fall into the -- into the mind-set? Everybody seems to talk and move and think just like the characters would in Harlan, Kentucky.

WALTON GOGGINS: Do you want to jump in?

JACOB PITTS: Just think of the stereotypical thing to do. That's what I do. Yeah.

7

JOELLE CARTER: It's not that hard. They are really great with location and set, and we've had a lot of -- a lot of time to get to know our characters. I'm from the South. Walton is from the South. It's just, the sets are so rich, and the stories, the dialogue, they, like, deliver the way you talk almost. And then you, you know, have to chalk a little bit up to that we are kind of talented.

WALTON GOGGINS: Yeah. I think it has a lot to do with the words, to be quite honest with you, you know, as much as it does about the place. Dave Blass is our art director, kind of production designer, and he does an amazing job, with his team, at making it look as authentic as we possibly can in California, but it's -- for me, I think for a lot of us, it's the words, and it's always been about the words. And, you know, you can say poetry under a -- Southern poetry under an oak tree that's a California oak or a pine tree or any other tree that would be in Harlan County and evoke kind of the same feeling. So I think a lot of it, you know, for a lot of us has to do with what's on the page, you know, and if that's authentic, then the place itself will feel authentic, you know.

QUESTION: Can you talk a little bit about bringing in Patton and how that came about?

GRAHAM YOST: I had heard that he was a fan of the show, and we reached out to him last year for one part. I think he was – I think we were thinking in the Fogle, the pawn shop thing, that he would be one of those guys, I think, or something. Anyway, he was not available. So we had two writers. Chris Provenzano and Ingrid Escajeda had gone down to Harlan to do research between the seasons, and they came upon -- they found out about this position in the counties of Kentucky of constable, and we just loved the idea of a guy who was kind of a cop wannabe, who -- anyway, we started thinking about it, and it quickly came up in the room, "What about that for Patton?" We reached out to him. He said, "Absolutely." And he's just so fantastic, and he's, you know, become a part of the show. And as long as he's willing to play and wants to and we can get him, we will -- he's become part of our world, and we feel just so lucky.

QUESTION: And where did you find a Gremlin?

GRAHAM YOST: You know, the transpo department, they found a Gremlin. My mother had a Gremlin back in the day, and I said, "Please let it be a Gremlin." But just one quick thing, I think it speaks to the show and everything, which is the sense that everyone is sort of pulling in the same direction. And I like to say the direction is Elmore Leonard, but everyone gets into it. So we went to the mix of that first episode, and they put in the sound. When his car drives up and he's got the lights going and the siren does, just, this weird dying sound as he turns the car off (dying engine sound), that was done by the sound department, and they got such a kick out of that, and we were all laughing. It gets a laugh. The sound gets a laugh. And that's one of the really gratifying parts of doing the show is everyone like Dave Blass, Francis Kenny, all of the editors, music, sound, everyone is just really, really on the top of their game.

8

9