The Villains Questionnaire: Walton Goggins | GQ 

The Justified star on how cable TV made bad guys better, and why Robert Duvall scared the shit out of him as a kid

Walton Goggins has played two of TV\'s most indelible villains: Detective Shane Vendrell on the FX police drama

The Shield, and, currently, Boyd Crowder on another FX drama, Justified. While Vendress was a bad cop gone very bad, Crowder was a truly evil man, a career criminal, who has, if not turned good, then at least developed a moral code you can appreciate; he hates all the right people. That, combined with a sly intelligence and wit, have made Crowder as likeable as the show\'s star, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant. In some ways, the two are Justified\'s true love story, despite being on opposite sides of the law; when all the women are gone, Boyd and Raylan will still be trading barbs and sharing whiskey on a Kentucky porch, and who doesn\'t want to be around for that? You relish their scenes, and that has as much to do with the forty-year-old Goggins\'s seductive charisma (aided by the most astonishingly—actually, disturbingly—white teeth on TV) as with the excellent writing on the page. We wondered who and what made Walton Goggins so good at playing bad.

Walton Goggins: If I\'m being honest, it was a shark. It was Jaws. You know I didn\'t watch a lot of scary movies when I was a kid, but I did see that one and I refused to even get in a bathtub, much less a lake or the ocean. Believe it or not, it inspired me to become a master scuba diver so that I could deal with that fear. So, thanks, Steven Spielberg.

Walton Goggins: Dorian Grey. The Portrait of Dorian Grey beautifully articulates how the altruistic part of ourselves clashes with our essentially narcissistic state.

GQ: What actor has captured evil better than any other?

Walton Goggins: There are so many: Scott Glenn in Urban Cowboy. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. But I think Robert Duvall in The Great Santini affected me the most. I\'m drawn to villains that are three-dimensional and raw and that I can kind of see in my own life. As a younger man, I had an aversion to strong, domineering alpha-males, which Duvall captured so profoundly in Santini. I didn\'t want to be that kind of man.

Walton Goggins: Something happening to my child. I never knew that fear before my son was born, and now I understand why parents always answer that question that way.

GQ: Do you tap into your fears when you\'re playing a villain?

Walton Goggins: You know, I don\'t. I really believe that when you\'re playing a character that everything is contained in the script. If I\'m pulling from things from my own life, then I think I\'m being disingenuous to the character and the story.

GQ: Has there ever been a villain that you rooted for, that you admired?

Walton Goggins: I think villains have had a resurgence in the last ten years, thanks to cable TV dramas, which have allowed for more exploration of men like Tony Soprano or Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis, The Shield)—anti-heroes who would, before that, have just been somebody the good guy killed. Those two, in particular, were bad guys I couldn\'t get enough of. I wanted to understand them. And viewers have that opportunity when they can watch eighty-five hours of a character on TV. In a film, there\'s not enough time to really flesh a villain out. With Vic Mackey—Chiklis did him right. You come to see the world from his perverted moral compass.

GQ: In your mind, do Boyd or Shane see themselves as bad guys?

Walton Goggins: No. I think if you play a character from that perspective, then you can\'t help but be one-dimensional. And you have to see yourself as a human being. You have to be authentic. Without that, why watch?

GQ: When did you know you were good at playing bad?

Walton Goggins: It\'s interesting, because I never set out in this business to be a villain. I didn\'t want to be the robber growing up, I wanted to be the cowboy. But unfortunately, that\'s not how this industry saw me. So what I\'ve tried to do is infuse my villains with as much empathy as possible. I really believe that without seeing someone three-dimensionally, you have no feelings for them as an actor or as a viewer.

GQ: How much of Boyd existed on the page, and how much did you bring to the role?

Walton Goggins: The words existed, strung together in a very poetic way. I added a level of ambiguity early on, which I think was Boyd\'s strength in the first episodes. And I was able to bring an intellect. I was interested in playing a guy who, more often than not, is the smartest person in the room—a person who has a real flare and a love of words, who is self-taught, and a showman. You know, I\'m from the South, and I wasn\'t interested in perpetuating a stereotypical southern character. I wanted Boyd to be everything under the sun—smart being most important. But the first script I read? It was really good—eighty percent of Boyd was right there. He felt like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes

GQ: I read that Boyd\'s character was killed off in the pilot, but viewers who saw it really responded to him.

Walton Goggins: That\'s true. Early audiences responded to him in a way that allowed me to live. And so that bullet just missed my heart! And I would like to take responsibility for all of it—it\'s all me! [laughs] But I do think Boyd helps the Raylan Givens character. Because they were once childhood friends, he gives Raylan history. Without Boyd, the show would have lost what\'s most important, which is its exploration of a friendship that changes from anger to animosity to alliance.

GQ: Was there a physical detail that helped you get into Boyd Crowder\'s head?

Walton Goggins: The buttoning of the top button of his shirt. Once I did that randomly, it was like, "I got this guy."

GQ: Is your preparation for playing a villain any different from preparation for playing a good guy?

Walton Goggins: No, but the recovery afterwards is different because you live in a very dark space. I would like to do a romantic comedy as much as anybody, but this is the career that I have.

Walton Goggins: If I\'m being honest, ten-percent evil in my real life. That means that one out of every ten sentences that come out of my mouth? You better watch out.

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