Justified actor finds SHADES OF GREY in 'redneck' character

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Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder in Justified. (TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT)

He might just be the most unforgettable TV actor you've never heard of.

Walton Goggins isn't exactly a household name, but if you've encountered his work on two of television's most emphatically original dramas -- FX's The Shield and Justified -- you know exactly who he is.

The gangly, Alabama-born, Georgia-raised performer with the upraised black hair and hard-to-miss teeth probably won't find himself competing for People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive title anytime soon, but his continuing roles in the two aforementioned cop-driven dramas demonstrate how much a great supporting actor can add to a series star's impact.

In The Shield (which ran from 2002 to '08), Goggins portrayed Shane Vendrell, the deeply conflicted friend/foe/foil alongside Michael Chiklis's Emmy-winning run as crooked cop Vic Mackey. In Justified, which is currently in its third season on Super Channel (and had its regular-cable première last week on Showcase), Goggins portrays Boyd Crowder, the childhood friend and unavoidable grown-up enemy of the show's central character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant).

In both cases, Goggins' performance in a supporting role was so good that his character simply elevated itself above the rest of the surrounding cast, creating a unique and ultimately crucial relationship with the show's protagonist.

How good is Goggins at what he does? Well consider this: in the Elmore Leonard novella upon which Justified is based, Boyd Crowder is gunned down by Raylan Givens and dies at the end of the story. When series creator Graham Yost shot the series pilot, Boyd took the bullet and was seemingly destined to follow the author's original storyline -- until a second look at Goggins' performance prompted the producer to have a change of heart.

"We love the relationship between Raylan and Boyd, and felt there was something that Boyd would give to Raylan's story, as sort of a dark mirror and someone who knew him back when and could ask the questions that might lead to a deeper understanding of Raylan -- as well as the fact we thought it would just be an interesting, fun story to play," Yost explained before the series' second-season launch in 2011.

When he's first confronted by Raylan Givens, Boyd presents himself as a backwoods-bred neo-Nazi drug dealer who has very few scruples and seemingly even fewer brains. But as Justified evolves, we learn there's a whole lot more to Boyd than that first impression revealed.

"We had long conversations about this character; on paper, it would have been easy -- for me, anyway -- to characterize him as just another redneck kind of unintelligent, bad, racist guy," said Goggins, 40. "I'm not interested in that at all. I'm from the South ... so when I talked to Graham and to Tim about this guy Boyd and what he could be, I wanted to kind of turn that stereotypical paradigm on its head.

"I wanted this guy to be the smartest guy in the room, and I wanted his intellect, his IQ, to be off the charts, and to look at him as more of a Svengali. This is a guy who finds order in the universe when things make sense to him -- when he believes fervently in something, whether it's Nazism, which is bulls , or it's God, whatever that means."

In a more recent interview, as Justified headed into its (current) third season, Goggins admitted that he's a bit surprised by the incredible ride the last decade of his career has provided.

"My wife and I have talked at length about it, and after The Shield, I never thought I would have the opportunity in television to be in a position where I couldn't wait to get to work every day and play a character like this," said Goggins, who also produces films and TV shows under the Ginny Mule Pictures banner (the company won an Oscar in 2001 for the short film The Accountant). "You know, I lay in bed at night sometimes and I just thank my lucky stars.

"I can't believe I'm here with this group of people, and I get to say these words that are generated out of the imaginations of Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and all of these incredible writers every week. I'm a lucky man. Lightning rarely strikes twice, so I'm very grateful."

New episodes of Justified air Mondays at 9 p.m. on Super Channel; Season 1 is airing on Sundays at midnight on Showcase.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 22, 2012 E7