Didn’t want to perpetuate the stereotypes.
There’s no doubt that the south often gets a negative portrayal in the media, with Hollywood writers frequently depicting those from the southern United States as backwards, uneducated, racist rednecks.
Of course anybody who lives in the south (or spent any time here) knows that’s not true. I mean, just ask all of the World Cup tourists who visited the south and came away realizing what a welcoming and kind place it is, even to those from other countries.
Well apparently Walton Goggins had no interest in helping Hollywood further the stereotypes of the south.
Goggins played Boyd Crowder in the FX crime drama Justified, which ran from 2010 to 2015. The role earned him an Emmy nomination, and his performance in the show has been widely praised as one of his best. But initially, Goggins turned down the role because of how it portrayed his home.
The actor is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and the character he played in the series was from Harlan County, Kentucky. In the first season of the series, Crowder is introduced as a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi – but as it turns out, the persona is simply a cover for his own criminal activity. (In the first episode, he blows up a black church and claims that it was for racial reasons, but as it turns out the church was running a competing marijuana operation).
The original script, though, didn’t make it clear that Goggins’ character didn’t actually believe his own bigoted words – so the actor initially turned the role down.
As he recalled during an interview with GQ a couple years ago that’s recently gone viral again:
“I read it, extremely well-written … I turned it down twice because of a speech that Boyd Crowder made in the middle of the show, and just a feeling that, they’re just selling southern culture down the river. This is just a one-dimensional interpretation, or perpetuating a stereotype if you will, of a southern character that I no longer needed to play. And I don’t believe in that. I’ve never believed in that.
The south is way more complicated than it has been depicted in movies and TV, and I didn’t want to participate in selling out my culture anymore. Some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my life are from the south. Some of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life are from the south.”
Well Goggins declined to take the role of Crowder, but after speaking with co-star Tim Olyphant and the show’s executive producer Graham Yost, he agreed to do it – as long as Olyphant’s character made clear that Goggins’ character didn’t actually believe what he was saying during his racist rant:
“After the second, ‘Thank you so much for the opportunity, but no, I can’t play this, I’m sorry,’ Tim Olyphant gave me a call, and he said, ‘Listen, I think it could be special, and I think that we could be special together. What do you need in order for it to be a yes?’ And I think I talked to him and Graham, and I said, ‘Two things. I need for Boyd Crowder to be the smartest person in the room.’ That’s the only way that I would play him.
And, ‘I need, whenever he’s going on this racial rant, I need you to say to me that I know you don’t believe half the s–t that’s coming outta your mouth.’ That it’s performative.”
That’s exactly what happened, and in the scene that made it to air, Olyphant’s character dismisses Crowder’s racist remarks as a cover for his own criminal activity:
And by the second season, the whole “neo-Nazi” storyline for Crowder was gone from the show entirely.
Score that as a win for the south – and for Goggins.
