A lot of actors shy away from taking ownership of the characters they play. And after they've played them long enough, particularly on a long-running TV series, they tire of analyzing their alter ego as if it were an extension of them. But Walton Goggins can't shake Justified's enigmatic Boyd Crowder quite so easily. And while for five years he largely deferred to how Elmore Leonard (whose Fire in the Hole novella provided the source material for Justified) and series executive producer Graham Yost outlined and shaded in Crowder's complexities, he also internalized Boyd to the point of preoccupation.

So despite enjoying a rare day off from shooting Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight (after which he'll commence co-lead duties on HBO's upcoming comedy Vice Principals alongside Danny McBride), Goggins relishes the opportunity to revisit and deconstruct the man whose skinny jeans and outlaw spirit he only recently left behind. A week prior to Justified's finale, the 43-year-old Georgia native, husband, and father of a four-year-old son engaged in what was less a question-and-answer session than conscientious unpacking of Boyd, his relationship with mortal frenemy Raylan Givens, and moving on after a half-decade in his career-defining guise.

In the penultimate episode, Shea Whigham plays an almost prophetic character that takes Boyd to task a bit. Before Boyd shoots him, he defiantly insists he knows who he is and doesn't care about his legend. Is that true?

I can't believe that this is what you're starting with, and I'm so grateful you are. Shea Whigham, first and foremost, I am such an admirer of his creative constitution. He is such a gifted actor, and we were so incredibly lucky to have him be, as you put it, a prophetic figure for Boyd's future. But it also represents where he's come to in his psyche. I think it's the psychological Rubicon that Boyd crosses that he cannot come back from. It's indicative of the mental state he's in. That storyline was debated for a long time. They had me killing the very guy who represented all the things Boyd has seen and celebrated bout himself. He sees himself as a defender of the disenfranchised. Even though he sold them drugs, even though he made money on the backs of the poor, in his own perverted moral code [he] feels himself to be a defender of those rights. If you look back at every public forum Boyd has spoken in front of, he is in some ways talking about that. And when they asked me to kill this person, I had a very difficult time with it. I felt it was unnecessary. I didn't think we had come to that place. I thought this was an action he'd never be forgiven for, that it is a bridge too far for who he is as a person. And when they said this is something we really wanna do, I acquiesced and saw the way I can do it and still be true to this person. And that is, let's explore philosophically where Boyd is coming from in that moment, understanding that Boyd is doing something that disgusts him and he is disgusted not only with his action. He is disgusted with himself, he is disgusted with the life he's been leading, and then he goes into his speech. When he says, "You think you're better than me? Look at you. You're disenfranchised and don't even know it. Me, I'm my own man." He's saying, "I had freedom," when in essence, it's just an opaque defense for what he's about to do. And when he raises that gun and says, "I'm an outlaw," it's with disgust, but that's how low Boyd has dropped in the pursuit of that which he ultimately needs, and the extent he's willing to go in order to get that.

But by that point, we've already seen Boyd kill Carl and doggedly pursue Ava with dubious intentions. Does all this expose Boyd as having always been ultimately dishonest with himself about himself?

I do, yeah. He is beginning to be honest about who he is as a person and his inability to escape who he is as a person. And it runs contrary to his actions for the last three years, which has been a desperate need to get out of the water and breathe air and real freedom, which is a life without crime, to move past his violent heritage and the role that he is supposed to play in perpetuating his own family legacy. If you look at everything he's done violently, it has been to escape his lot in life. And how he's cutting off the head of the thing he most loves in the world besides Ava. And why does he do that? I feel that if you really look at the course of this show and who Boyd is, the people he's killed have always been according to his moral code. He's a person that you know where you stand. I tell you up front: If you cross me, I'm gonna to kill you. This is where you fit in my life. He has done that with everyone, and Boyd's only killed five, six people in the five years of this show, and yet he has this reputation. But I think the audience understands where they stand with Boyd, and [Whigham's character] is a person who did nothing to him. But Boyd has, through his obsession with Raylan Givens, lost all sense of normalcy. He's never had equilibrium, and now he's more out of balance and more frenetic than he's ever been. He's not dictating his actions. His actions are dictating him.

Would you say Raylan and Boyd are mutually, singularly obsessed with each other?

That's it. It's that endless, overpowering obsession that each man has with the other that will lead to their ultimate downfall. It is that ego, that, "I am better than him, and I am going to beat Raylan Givens." And it is Raylan Givens saying, "I am going to get Boyd Crowder. If I lose my job, if I lose my family, if I lose my reputation, if I lose my relationship with my daughter, then that's the price that has to be paid." And those are two people that have lost all sense of reason. They're unreasonable people, and Boyd points it out [in]. Boyd says to Raylan, "Why you wanna get me so bad? There's a lot of bad guys out there. Why me." And he's just articulating Raylan's obsession. And in the same breath, Boyd's just as obsessed with beating Raylan.

It might be easier if they stopped being coy and stubborn and sat down for a therapy session.

[Laughs] It's true. Here's the irony in their dynamic: It is Boyd's obsession with Raylan Givens that will ultimately lead to his end. It is Raylan's obsession with Boyd Crowder that will ultimately lead to his end. The thing neither one of them realizes is if either one of them got what they truly wanted, they would have a life without meaning. Hopefully, what they both will learn is you've been looking for reason in the wrong drawer. The reason for living is not because this other person exists for you to rub up against, it's because the world is beautiful. And that is a rock-bottom place that a person needs to reach in order to come to that conclusion. And I can say, without getting in trouble, that that is a place both of them will come to.

Are both Raylan and Boyd so submissive to their moral codes that they're out of touch with the men they really are?

Yeah, and I think that either you realize there are greater forces in this world controlling your own perception of the world, and therefore your perception of the world changes where you are no longer the center of your own narrative, or you will die. You don't have another option, and I don't think either of these men have an option outside of that.

That kind of holistic approach to life also requires humility, which both men tend to lack.

And humility is a dish served up in many different forms. Me, Walton Goggins, I am humbled in the service of my four-year-old. That is the person I am responsible to and for. There's real freedom in that. It takes a lot of energy and wasted responsibility to always be the hero in your story. It takes a real man, a real woman, a real evolved person to understand, "No, my story's part of a larger story, which is still part of a larger story." And hopefully that's where these two men will get to, or at least one of them.

If they had that perspective, Raylan would be in Florida with Winona and Boyd overseas with Ava and $100,000 by now.

That's exactly right. And isn't that the irony in storytelling? You have all of these stories around you that are good. There's so much good happening in the world every single day. There are like 60 billion good stories in a day, and yet there are a million bad stories, and those are the stories we tell. That's the fiction we need as a species. In order to get to a place of peace and harmony, you need to go through the fucking muck, and Justified is no different, but I think we got there, and I'm really proud of how it ended.

Do you feel Justified sometimes deviated too far from the Raylan/Boyd relationship?

I feel the deviations from that relationship were very strategic and wisely implemented by Graham [Yost], because if it's only about these two guys, then the show doesn't have anywhere to go. It's the seasons in which Raylan and Boyd barely interacted that were even more intriguing to me. As much as we interfaced in season one and season two, if you go to that gold mine too many times, then you're gonna run out of gold. The writers recognized that early on, and we all wanted every conversation Boyd and Raylan had to be advancing their relationship. You look at those seasons when Boyd, in season four, is trying to build this life with Ava and they're coming together, and then at the end of the season their relationship comes to an end, the exact same thing is happening in Rayln's world with Winona. So many of the things that are not seen overtly are always there, intangibly speaking, for these two guys. But it is what is. Do you think the show at times has veered away from this central relationship unnecessarily?

As a viewer, it did feel that way at times, but I've yet to really get enough distance from the series to look at the sum of the parts.

I think it's a justified criticism. I think we have, as a show, walked into rooms only to ask ourselves once we're in that room, "Why are we here?" And that's happened more than once, and as these things go on, you try to rectify those situations. It's very difficult to weave a narrative over a six-year period. Especially [adapting] Elmore Leonard. His writing is so good and it's so specific. This isn't Mad Men. It's not a world created from the mind of Matt Weiner, or from the mind of Shawn Ryan or Vince Gilligan. This is a world created from the mind of Elmore Leonard, and Graham Yost was tasked with the damned-near impossible, which was to sustain that level of poetic dialogue, the comedy, the absurd nature of Elmore Leonard, and to walk the line between the needs of an Elmore novel versus the needs of dramatic television in the 21st century. And we've not always gotten it right, and I think Graham would be the first to admit that, but our efforts and intentions and hearts were always in the right place.

And you probably needed to widen the scope in order to realize how central Raylan and Boyd's relationship was to the show, and as a viewer, you have to go through those ups and downs with it.

This could have been a two-season show, but god knows I'm glad it wasn't, because we got to explore all the different sides of these people. I feel like I've unearthed all [Boyd's] deepest, darkest secrets, and I've been able to work with my tools in that soil for a very long time. But after the decision was made to keep Boyd around after the first season, it was always going to come back to this. The unexpected surprise and gift to all of us was Joelle Carter and Ava's participation in all of this, and the triangular nature that manifested once they really thought about and coalesced all the events that led up to this final season.

It's also become less clear who the bad guy is at times. Even Raylan's sense of humor has, by show's end, bordered on sadistic and mean.

I agree. All of the insults lobbed toward Boyd and his behavior in the last three episodes, a lot of those hand grenades should be directed in the hands of Raylan Givens. He's no different. In some ways, he's worse.

Hell, he almost let Bob die.

Yeah, and he did let Dewey die. He's more selfish than all of us.

Whatever becomes of Boyd and Raylan, you've moved on now to Hateful Eight. How does Tarantino's storytelling differ?

Well, I think Quentin Tarantino's in the same vein as Elmore Leonard, in the sense that the world Tarantino creates is, unto itself, Tarantino. There is no other world like it except for Elmore Leonard. And the motivations and the characters in [Hateful Eight] are so uniquely his worldview and his own way of communicating his art that it's beyond satisfying. It's an experience I would wish on anyone that could or should be so lucky to have a Tarantino feather in your cap. We're more than halfway done now, and I'm already feeling the pangs of no longer playing Chris Mannix, and this experience has made the end of Boyd Crowder and my experience on Justified an easier pill to swallow.

The finality of acting is very strange. It's almost akin to a freelance life.

Yeah, there is no permanence in this chosen profession, and the closest thing you have to it is a show that is ongoing, [where] you can look at and anticipate the next chapter in that story episode-to-episode and year-to-year. In a movie, it's a whole different ball of wax, because you're delivered the meal and you're able to eat it. With Tarantino, that changes, because for him it's a living, breathing organism, but very few filmmakers can play jazz within their own material the way Quentin has. So we're in it and living it now, and I still pinch myself every day I step into that fucking 32-degree stage where we're filming now. You get that cold inside of you and it doesn't leave for hours, but it's through that adversity that you get what Quentin is trying to achieve. And I'm having the time of my life with him and all these actors. Are you kidding me? With Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Demian Bichir. I mean it just goes on and on.

Not to mention you're now part of Tarantino's stable, which is many an actor's fantasy.

Yeah, I can't tell you how much in self-denial of that I am. [Laughs] Only to realize that two in a row kind of is the case, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for that opportunity, just to be invited to one party, let alone two. You have three generations of relationships from actor to director in this one, and I get to see it up front and personal. Buy your ticket now. It's worth it. I think it's the greatest show on earth, man.

Are you excited to segue into the absurd with Vice Principals?

It is a welcome reprieve from the emotional weight that I've been living under through Boyd for the last few years, and it's an opportunity to step into the ring with some of the greatest people doing comedy in the world today. I've been a fan of these guys and what they've done for a very long time, so I'm over the moon. I can't believe this is where I am in my life, and I'm just taking it a day at a time and am very grateful.

And hey, now you're not on TV, you're on HBO.

[Laughs] It's a strange feeling. I've been on FX for 14 years, and they're like family to me, and they have a very special relationship to the art they create, and so does HBO. They're both putting out some of the best content, regardless of film or television, in the world, and I'm not walking away from one chapter, but beginning another.

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