Justified - Star Pulse: Walton Goggins Interview

Source: Star Pulse [follow link for complete interview]



STAR PULSE: Interview: 'Justified's' Walton Goggins Decodes His Character

by Brittany Frederick
March 17th, 2011

If you know good drama, you've heard of Walton Goggins. After a successful run on The Shield, he was so good in the pilot for FX's Justified that he went from intended victim to series regular. Now in season two, his Boyd Crowder has continued to grow, while remaining just as dangerous as ever. As we head into the second half of the season, the incredibly eloquent Goggins was kind enough to sit down for a chat about all things Boyd...



... One of the things that's seeming to straighten him out is his relationship with his now ex-sister-in-law, Ava. She's been a good influence on him. Where might they be headed?

WG: "I think that what you’re going to see, hopefully, what will allow him to find a place in the middle is love. I think you’re seeing that burgeoning relationship happening now between him and Ava. At the end of the day, what may be Boyd’s salvation is love. A moral code infused with that kind of love, to Boyd, is even more complex than believing in Jesus or any other escapade he’s found himself in or on.

I worked really hard with the writers and with Joelle [Carter] to set this relationship up in a way that we feel like we’ve earned it so that if it happens, you will be ready for it. You will think that we’ve earned it because we’ve taken our time with it.

Some of the most interesting conversations we had at the beginning of the season this year, for me as an actor and a collaborator, revolved around Boyd as a romantic guy. How would Boyd kind of go about really courting a woman? I said, “Let’s do things different.” He has to come at this from a completely different angle because in his heart, Boyd is a poet. He’s an intellectual, even though he's many, many other things.

It was just a slow process about how do we earn this; how do we make it different than the rest of television. Hopefully we’ve done our job. Hopefully you’ll want to see them hook up by the time they do. I mean, how ironic and how satisfying would it be that if at the end of this man’s journey, what brought him peace was a true understanding of love? Maybe he is in the process of experiencing an emotion that he’s never experienced before..."

Justified airs Wednesdays 10/9C on FX.