Timothy Olyphant & Walton Goggins' Justified Feud Explained

If you work with someone long enough, they're bound to get on your nerves. Some of the greatest creative partnerships out there — from John Lennon and Paul McCartney to Harold Ramis and Bill Murray — have had their fights. By virtue of the public nature of celebrity, these tiffs often become famous in their own right. Fans love to rubberneck and gossip, but we also love to pretend our favorite TV families are, well, as tight-knit as a family.

For this reason alone, headlines about real-life beef between the swaggering hero behind FX's modern Western "Justified" and the actor playing the show's iconic villain came as a surprise when they started circulating last year. Could it really be true that Walton Goggins, the intensely talented actor who embodied outlaw Boyd Crowder for six seasons of "Justified," was on the outs with Timothy Olyphant, who is not only the internet's favorite space cowboy but also apparently a chill stoner in real life? Well, sort of, but as far as we can tell, both remained fairly respectful of one another in the press, and it sounds like they cleared the air before the public even knew about their conflict.

The world first heard rumblings of a Goggins-Olyphant discord in Peter Biskind's 2023 book "Pandora's Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV." When profiled by The Independent for his Emmy-nominated turn on "Fallout" the following year, Goggins was asked about a passage in Biskind's book that claimed he and Olyphant "weren't talking" by the time the show's initial run wrapped in 2015. "We had a tough time towards the end of 'Justified,'" Goggins admitted. "We were so deep into these people we were playing, and they were so polar opposite at this point in the story... I think we were both obsessed with our own points of view, just carrying the weight of this conflict."

Their off-screen separation sounds like it ran parallel to the on-screen split between Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens and his old mining buddy turned criminal overlord, Boyd Crowder. For much of the series, the two were verbal sparring partners, uneasy allies, or back-burner enemies, but season 6 amped up Boyd's villainy, furthering the gap between the two characters. Still, the show ended on a sincere, near-reconciliatory note between the two. According to Goggins, the actors are fine now that they've taken some time apart. 

"I think we just needed to separate, like brothers," he explained, noting emphatically that they care about one another. "I respect and love him greatly, and I feel respected and loved by him greatly. We just needed to take a break in order to come back together."

It's easy to see where the two may have butted heads, especially when taking into consideration Olyphant's point of view. "Okay, here's my version," Olyphant told Vanity Fair in an interview published just weeks after Goggins' comments. "I adored working with Walt from the jump, but these actors, they're a pain in the ass. They get really into their work." More specifically, Olyphant claimed that as the show unfolded, Goggins began growing more opinionated about writing choices concerning the Boyd Crowder character.

"There was this thing where, as the show went on, and especially as the thing came to an end, where I would come from the writers' room," Olyphant recalled. "They'd add things that were like, 'Here's what we need Walt to do in order to get to this finale we want.' Then Walt would say his character would never do that, and then I'd be like, 'Goddamn it.'" This explanation makes more sense if you take a look at interviews and behind-the-scenes footage the two have done separately over the years.

In interviews and on talk shows like "Conan," Olyphant frequently takes a joking approach to his career, and notes that he sees acting and producing first and foremost as jobs with a paycheck. It's a much more practical, no-frills approach than most actors take, with very little pretense or lofty talk of artistry. Olyphant did get a bit serious about craft during a New York Film Academy Q&A, when he noted that he previously studied the Meisner acting technique, and feels that everything he needs to know about his character is inherent in the script. "I'm not even interested [in] what [my character] was like when he was seven years old or 15 years old or 18 years old," he explained. "You're just playing the scene; you're just literally playing what's in front of you."

It's always been clear that Goggins, meanwhile, deeply internalizes his performances. My personal first impression of the actor came via an interview for a featurette on a DVD box set of "The Shield" season 4. His breakout role was an emotionally taxing one, and in the footage, the actor is on the verge of tears while talking (in the first person) about the death of a character his own character cared for, almost as if he is fictional corrupt LAPD cop Shane Vendrell. During the pilot shoot on "Justified," Goggins also wore his character's swastika tattoo off-set as part of his process of getting in Boyd's head. Olyphant, he told NPR, pleaded with him to roll down his sleeves when the pair were in public.

In short: Goggins seems to be an actor with a specific artistic process who feels his characters very deeply, while Olyphant seems happy to stand on his mark in the morning and take off the costume at the end of the day. During the last days of "Justified," Olyphant said, they would "get really frustrated with each other."

In his Vanity Fair profile, Olyphant also admitted that the frustrations could have had something to do with the impending end of the series. "I also think looking back, people have a hard time saying goodbye," Olyphant explained. "Every time I'm on the end of any shoot, the longer the shoot, the more you feel it. Everybody starts acting funny. Summer camp comes to an end. I'd love to say that I'm immune to that, but I'm not." He concluded that maybe one or both of them were "[making] it easier to walk away."

The "Justified" finale may have been a farewell for the cast and crew, but it wasn't goodbye forever for either the actors or the show itself. Raylan Givens returned in 2023 with "Justified: City Primeval," a fantastic next chapter that took a detour to Detroit before making its way back to Harlan County, Kentucky — and Goggins' Boyd Crowder — in the final moments of its finale. If the show returns for a second season someday, it seems likely that it'll see Olyphant and Goggins reunite on screen.

In the meantime, a serendipitous meeting in Thailand last year led to a real-life reunion between the two. "Look at this beautiful Thailand surprise," Goggins wrote in an Instagram post featuring he and Olyphant (in full bleach-blonde SAG-AFTRA strike mode) posed beside a scenic beach. "Got to meet up with Raylan Givens for lunch today," the actor, who was filming season 3 of "The White Lotus" at the time, wrote. "Talk about comforts from home ... Just what I needed. What a good man. The road we've walked." 

For his part, Olyphant told Vanity Fair that he "always adored" Goggins, adding, "I'd work with him again in a heartbeat. And I'm assuming if we do it again, he'll be more predisposed to listen to me." And if he doesn't, well, it'll still make for great TV.