Olyphant's 'Justified' starting out with a bang

Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens has a great walk. A moseying, unconcerned kind of walk that signals his style of dealing with the world.

He's supercool under pressure. Even staring down the barrel of a bad guy's gun, Givens tosses the dilemma back on the other man, as if to say: Stop your foolishness before you make your problems worse.

Such is the surface ease and, yes, inner turmoil of Givens, hero of the new FX drama "Justified." It started with a bang in mid-March by attracting more than 4 million viewers.

It stars Timothy Olyphant as a child of Eastern Kentucky coal country who bolted from that unforgiving way of life for the wide, open spaces of the federal marshal service. But as "Justified" began, a fatal shooting by Givens may not have been quite justified. As punishment, he was reassigned from sunny Miami to the Lexington, Ky., office.

Now he's back home where bad guys, old habits and ghosts are right where he left them, along with his ex-wife and long-estranged father, who happens to be a career criminal.

"Raylan told himself he was never going back," says Olyphant. "Then he gets back and there's a lot waiting for him."

The show is colorful and quirky, befitting its roots in the fiction of crime novelist Elmore Leonard. But something darker is also in the air, which poses the challenge of balancing lightheartedness with heavier drama.

The premiere episode left an enigmatic aftertaste at its fade-out when Raylan's ex tells him, "Honestly, you're the angriest man I have ever known."

Olyphant likes how the show gave viewers that little ticking bomb of information. "It's a nice thing to just have it there," he says. "To know that someone who understands Raylan better than most, sees something there that even he seems to be unaware of."

Maybe he's harboring buried rage. But at the same time, Raylan has a playful, boyish side.

"He's a guy that likes an ice cream cone!" laughs Olyphant. And on a future episode, viewers will hear how Raylan lost a prisoner he was transporting when he left him unattended in the motel room to visit Baskin-Robbins next door.

Raylan's cool is underscored by his purring drawl, a hint of which can be detected from chatting with Olyphant. But turns out he grew up in Northern California, not the South.

Lanky, handsome and boyish-looking, even now at 41, Olyphant decided to give drama a whirl at the University of California, Irvine, where he applied some course electives for an introduction to acting class.

He found acting fun, and, after ditching plans for grad school in fine arts, he and his wife moved to New York, where for a couple of years he studied drama.

He had few misgivings about his new pursuit.

"The fear wasn't whether an acting career could work or not," he says. "The fear was: What if it works?"

But by now, Olyphant feels ready to deal with the burdens of celebrity and other showbiz distractions that can spring up with stardom in a hit show.

Olyphant's film credits already include "A Perfect Getaway," "High Life," "Hitman" and "Live Free or Die Hard," as well as the just-released "The Crazies," an update of the George A. Romero horror classic.

But he caught the eye of TV viewers as Seth Bullock, the upright sheriff on HBO's rawboned Western, "Deadwood," and on FX's "Damages," where last season he had a recurring role as the mysterious love interest of the tormented lawyer played by Rose Byrne.

Then "Justified" came along. Olyphant was intrigued by its pilot script and by its looming clash of darkness and light.

Many titles for the series were considered and rejected, including one that Olyphant really liked: "The Undoing of Marshal Givens."

"I want the show to be about that: What happens when Givens gets back and some of the old demons start to set in? It's not a bad thing to watch this cool, cool dude come a little bit unraveled, a little bit undone.

"To pull at that thread a little bit," says Olyphant, "could be a fun place to go."