'The Justified Rule Was, Unless You See Them Being Zipped Up In A Body Bag, They Could Be Alive'

Two And A Half Mad Men.

We didn't have an official list. We had characters that we thought long and hard about how we would get them back in and could we.

Pretty well. We didn't get Quarles back in. Even though he lost his arm, he's not dead because the Justified rule was, unless you see them being zipped up in a body bag, they could be alive. We did some real verging on soap opera resurrections on that show. He got shot in the stomach with a shotgun and somehow he's still kicking -- that happened with cousin Johnny. It was more really that. There were some things where it's like, "Ah, we're not going to get time to this. Oh well."

He didn't, sadly, but he did. He did because he knew that we were trying to stay true to his world. He was alive through Season 4.

Yes. He knew that we were still charting a course in his direction. We really tried to end it roughly in the terrain, in the arena where we thought Elmore would end it, especially in terms of certain relationships. Elmore didn't jump forwards in time and that kind of thing so much. What we ended up with is something pretty close to what he-- I think he would have liked it.

First of all, it started with Tim [Olyphant] talking to Elmore on the set and saying, "Why don't you write another Raylan story?" He said, "Okay," and he wrote one and then another and then another and then tied them together and that became his book. It was just so crazy to read that and have, in that new book, Boyd alive -- he had killed [Boyd] off in his novella. To have the characters of Rachel and Tim, who he hadn't created. It was this weird coming together. I think Tim and I would both say that one of the most flattering and wonderful and heartwarming things is to see, on the dedication page, his dedication ["To Graham and Tim"].

It's like I won the lottery. We both did. Right after that is to have him not only tolerate our show, but like it and embrace it and use our characters. We were like, "Have at it." He in exchange said, "Just hang it up and strip it for parts." How wonderfully generous is that? That showed that he trusted us, and that was great.

That was very important. Elmore's books do that. His researcher Greg Sutter would do fantastic work. Greg was the one who introduced us to people in Harlan and Lexington. When writers would go on research trips there, we would use his contacts. He was very helpful. He would always try and get that stuff for Elmore, give him realms of material, and Elmore would go, "I want more on this. I want do do something here." We similarly would send people down every year to mine the terrain for stories. There would always be some kind of little hook where we'd go, "Oh, let's go in that direction." Sometimes it was small, like this year, where to put the money?

Where would Markham put the money? They had been there, and they said, "There's this pizza restaurant that used to be a bank and it's got a vault in it." I said, "Let's do that."

I had breakfast with Damon Lindelof. Look at me drop that name, boom. I told him the truth, and he said, "Don't tell anybody that."

But I'll tell you.

No, I've being pretty honest about it. We worked that out on the go. When we started that season, we didn't know who who Drew Thompson was going to be. We initially were going to make him one of the people up on Clover Hill, one of the rich guys. We had great actors. We had Sam Anderson, who we ended up using again in the next season, but we would say, "That could work and blah blah."

Then it got pitched, I think by Ben Cavell early. He said, "What if it's Shelby?" In my classic fashion, I said, "No, no no," and then a month later said, "Hey, what about Shelby?" Ben said, "That sounds great, boss." Then VJ Boyd, who we called Storytron, he just ran it through his mental computer and said, "It tracks." We made sure. Jim Beaver's roughly the right age -- a little younger, but roughly.

Felt similar, and it just became fun for us. In my job, sometimes I'm the Angel of Death. Actors never hear from me. When they get on their voicemail -- "Hi, it's the Justified office. Graham wants to speak to you" -- it's like, "Okay, I'm done." Calling Jim Beaver, I think he probably was a little nervous. I said, "Jim, we're thinking you'll be Drew Thompson. It means a lot of episodes from here to the end." He's got a lot of responsibilities with Supernatural, but we were able to work it out. That was a fun call.

We never thought of killing Boyd. We felt that Boyd would be part of the show for the run. No, there was thoughts about killing him in the finale. We thought about that a lot. The big one was this season: in the eleventh episode, Boyd has to break out of the hospital. We had thought that Boyd, when he got the gun, would get into a gun fight with the marshal and kill a marshal. We thought actually of Tim Gutterson, which Jacob [Pitts] would have loved.

All these actors: Mary Steenburgen said to Fred Golan, "All I want is, I want to be able to shoot someone at point blank range, and I want a good death scene." He's like, "Mary, we gave you both. We gave you two shootings and an amazing death scene." Jacob would have been fine with [Tim getting killed]. Then we thought, "We can't kill Gutterson because that would just change the whole thing. Then Raylan would have to kill Boyd," so we thought, "What about Nelson?," who was our whipping boy.

We thought about killing Nelson, and it was a funny thing. Taylor Elmore, who was writing that episode, I think, with Keith Schreier, had this impassioned call saying, "We have to kill Nelson." We said, "Okay man, okay."

Next day, we're in the room, "Taylor is calling. Put him on the speaker phone." He said, "Oh guys, we can't kill Nelson." He'd spoken to our marshal advisor, technical advisor Charlie Almanza. He'd said, "I know you think Nelson is kind of a joke, but he's a U.S. marshal. If he gets killed, then it's Black Hawk helicopter time. Then it's just the swarm of the federal government. Then none of the story you want to do, can you do because you're so hamstrung by that."

I had to call Mel Fair and say, "You're going to die." Then I had to call him back and say--

"You have been resurrected."

It was funny. When we killed him off in Season 4, I had three lengthy conversations with John Landgraf, the head of FX, about that. He never said don't do it, but he kept on saying, "Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Because once he's gone, he can't come back."

Chris Provenzano didn't tell me or Fred Golan or Dave Andron or any other writers that he was going to write that scene. It wasn't in the outline. We'd get the script, we've got Raylan going into the dungeon and there's Arlo. My mind almost blew. It was just like, "How audacious."

Nope, never done that before. Never did it again. There was this little sense in the final season. Tim and I would talk about it: "It's house money. Swing for the fences. It's the last chance we're going to get to try this." I thought Chris pulled it off. I thought Gwyneth shot it beautifully and the 2 actors. It was great to have Ray back on the set. I think it went about as far it could go because Arlo was never going to change. Arlo was never going to see Raylan's child and have a different thought about how I should have been a better father. That was never going to happen. Raylan's acceptance of Arlo, I think, comes through in that scene.

With Arlo and Harlan and all of that and letting it go.

"Just have my house." By the way, that was a surprise to me too, giving the house to Cope. It was just, "Wow, we hadn't decided what was going to happen to the house." There was one version where Loretta was going to get it. We played with that in the middle of the season when Raylan said, "Yeah, not anymore." This was a great, great solution. I think it was VJ who wrote that scene.

In the pilot, Tim worked with someone, and I think maybe would check in with that person on occasion, but everyone else was on their own. We have a lot of southerners in the cast, so they were able to take their accents of their upbringing and modify them a little bit. Meet Joelle, she doesn't have the Ava accent. Boyd: Walton has some accent and just sort of morphed it into more of a Kentucky thing. We never ended up with a perfect Kentucky accent, but we, more through vocabulary, were able to get it right.

I always go back to -- because, for me, it changed everything -- Hill Street Blues.

Yeah, most formative show, then there's stuff when I was a kid. I watched a lot of the comedies and stuff, not so much the hour-long, but Hill Street really changed television.