Few Western TV actors boast a cast even half as good as the stellar ensemble Justified brought together 15 years ago. Besides main cast members Walton Goggins and Natalie Zea, Neal McDonough, Stephen Root and Gerald McRaney all show up in the series at one time or another.

But the two most outstanding Western TV actors to feature in Justified are its central star, Timothy Olyphant, and veteran screen legend Sam Elliott. Series protagonist Raylan Givens is arguably Olyphant’s best role in a TV show, while Elliott manages to make his mark in just 12 episodes as the season 6 villain Avery Markham.

The showdowns between these two actors onscreen encapsulate Justified at its most brilliant. Timothy Olyphant exudes bullish charisma, while Sam Elliott plays one of his best Western roles to perfection, even without his signature mustache.

Having already cemented its place in the pantheon of great TV Westerns, Justified went all out by bringing Elliott into the fold for what proved to be its final season. What’s more pitting an actor of such significance to the history of the genre against Olyphant encouraged the show’s lead actor to raise his own game, too.

Justified Featured Two Of The Greatest Western TV Actors Of All Time

It’s no exaggeration to say that Timothy Olyphant and Sam Elliott are two of the best Western TV actors of all time. Elliott initially made his name in feature-length TV Westerns such as The Sacketts and The Quick and the Dead. Olyphant, meanwhile, was already an established great of the genre thanks to Deadwood, before becoming Raylan Givens.

In HBO’s Western period drama Deadwood, the actor plays Seth Bullock, another U.S. Marshal who arrives in the titular South Dakota town during a gold rush. Timothy Olyphant’s Bullock is a fictionalized version of the real-life sheriff and hardware store proprietor, who shoots from the hip and struggles to control his temper.

This role put Olyphant on the map as one of the foremost Western actors of his day, before the part of Raylan Givens in Justified placed him head-and-shoulders above any other star of the genre in the 21st century. By that point, Sam Elliott had already been a Western TV actor for over 30 years.

One of his first roles came in an episode of the legendary show Gunsmoke in 1972. Two decades later, he starred alongside Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer in the Western movie Tombstone, which turned him into a household name. In 1998, Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski brought Elliott to the attention of a whole new audience.

Nevertheless, until his lead role in Taylor Sheridan’s 1883, Sam Elliott was known primarily as a supporting actor in the Western genre. Timothy Olyphant, on the other hand, has become a major figure in the genre by playing two of the best Western TV protagonists of recent times.

Timothy Olyphant’s Justified Role Remains One Of His Best To Date

Only Olyphant’s breakout role in Deadwood can really compare to his performance as Raylan Givens in Justified, and its spinoff series Justified: City Primeval. Givens is a character of such complexity and depth that it’s difficult to imagine the actor surpassing the role with another performance in his future career.

At the same time, Justified’s protagonist bears the hallmarks of a classic Western antihero. Like Olyphant’s Deadwood character Seth Bullock, Raylan Givens is a U.S. marshal who roams the country doling out justice on his own terms, with little regard for legal protocols or keeping the peace. He also struggles to separate law enforcement from personal sentiments.

The cat-and-mouse game Givens plays with his nemesis, Boyd Crowder, is inextricably bound up with their personal history together, first as childhood friends, and then as miners. Olyphant strikes the delicate balance between an uncompromising Kentucky sheriff driven by his principles, and a flawed antihero who’s too often swayed by his emotions into actions he comes to regret.

Sam Elliott’s Justified Appearance Is Smaller, But He Still Shines

While some fans consider it a mistake for Sam Elliott to have appeared in Justified without his mustache, the decision to remove this iconic piece of facial hair for the series helps set Elliott’s antagonist Avery Markham apart from his other, more sympathetic characters. Markham features in just 12 episodes of the show, but more than makes his mark.

We’re used to seeing the actor’s bushy walrus mustache covering his mouth, and lending his appearance a kind of affable, folksy charm. Without it, Elliott is free to act as sinister and unsettling as befits his Justified character, with his dubious intentions scarcely concealed behind a malicious grin, which turns the twinkle in the actor’s eye into something else entirely.

Sam Elliott is a formidable screen presence, who’s able to get more out of Timothy Olyphant than any other actor in the series. Although Justified is ultimately about Raylan Givens catching Boyd Crowder, the scenes between Givens and Avery Markham are arguably the strongest in the whole series, which is hardly surprising, in light of the actors involved.

Justified

8/10

Release Date

2010 – 2015

Directors

Adam Arkin, Jon Avnet, Peter Werner, Bill Johnson, John Dahl, Michael W. Watkins, Dean Parisot, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Tony Goldwyn, Don Kurt, Michael Katleman, Billy Gierhart, Frederick King Keller, John David Coles, Lesli Linka Glatter

Writers

Fred Golan, Taylor Elmore, Ingrid Escajeda, VJ Boyd