(Spoilers for Justified and Justified: City Primeval will be found below.)
Justified: City Primeval ended on a high note, albeit a deliciously ambiguous note. Not only did Raylan (of course) take out Clement Mansell and return to Florida, where he retired from the U.S. Marshals Service, but we also got to see Boyd Crowder. That squirrelly little Dairy Queen fanatic was smooching a lady prison guard and escaped custody (with her) while supposedly en route to medical treatment. Raylan got the phone call at the end of the limited series, and we don’t know if he picked up or not, which is part of the fun.
Goggins (who previously had discussed Dairy Queen with our own Brian Grubb) had also previously spoken with our own Jason Tabrys and skillfully made sure the cameo didn’t leak ahead of time. “[I]t was not the time” came up in conversation, but tellingly (in retrospect), Goggins also declared, “I’ll be watching it all the way to the bitter end. How about yourself? Will you be watching it to the end?”
Well, “the end” is when Boyd showed up on the scene. Fast forward to this week, and co-showrunner Michael Dinner reflected to EW about how “everybody [on the team] would like” more Justified, which would not be City Primeval if it happened but more on par with the original series’ vibe. However, “it’s up to the network. Walton’s interested, and Tim’s interested, and we think there’s another chapter in Raylan’s life, but what are the needs of FX?”
So it’s all TBA, but Dinner did remark upon how Goggins did his damndest not give his appearance away, even though he didn’t enjoy “lying”:
[L]ook, poor Walton had to lie through his teeth. We had to do a little bit here and there, but because of the strike there wasn’t as much press — we didn’t have to stand on a red carpet and tell everybody [lies] about how it didn’t feel right [to bring him back for City Primeval]. But Walton, at that point, the actors had not struck yet, and he was doing all this press for Gemstones, and he called us after two days of press and was like, ‘I just spent two days lying to every journalist on the face of the planet that “‘it just wasn’t the time.’” So a lot of credit to him for sticking to his guns.
Additionally, co-showrunner Dave Andron discussed how they cast his wife, Ahna O’Reilly, as the lady prison guard. This went well onscreen, but also this:
And then I realized after that first take that I was about to watch Walton kiss my wife. I was like, “Oh … right. I really forgot that I was going to watch my wife make out with Walton Goggins today.” But I have to say, if it were any actor in the world, I felt okay about it being Walton.
Awkward for Dave Andron, yes, but the results were worth it. And fingers crossed for more Boyd and Raylan on our screens.
(Via EW)