Post by I Adore Ronnie on Aug 14, 2006 22:29:02 GMT -5
A friend of a friend of mine in LA – a journalist – had a sit-down with Goggins in late July, and I was asked to post the interview (she hasn't registered yet):
Walton Goggins Interview For 'The Shield'
Question: What a season you guys had last year. It's my favorite show on television.
Goggins: Thank you. It's not without a lot of work that happens. What's on the screen is really there. Everyone shows up with their A game every single day and we expect and will not accept anything less.
Question: What's going on with your character this year? Is there a bit of a death wish going on?
Goggins: Well, I don't know that it's just an over death wish. I think that it's just an insane amount of grief having done what he did and the inability to compartmentalize it the way that Vic is able to compartmentalize his transgressions. Shane can't do that. He has been able to do that in the past to a certain extent, but he's committed an act that he will have a very, very hard time forgiving himself for.
Question: He's hard wired to his emotions in a way that Vic is not.
Goggins: That's right.
Question: As a coworker of Kenny [Johnson] was it easy to tap into those emotions because you guys have been through all the shows together?
Goggins: Well, he's been a friend of mine for a long time and when we began that journey together and saw it in black and white, I just said to him, 'I would want no one to have this honor, but me.' It is an honor to say goodbye to someone who has been so, so important to me as an actor and to the success of this show. So oddly enough as cheeky as this may sound we held hands and we said, 'Lets do this, man.' It was at four o'clock in the morning and I remember kind of holding his hand before every take and after the grenade went off, and everything that kind of happened from there forward. It was very, very painful, but we went through it as brothers and as friends and we're still very, very good friends today.
Question: And you guys have had him back, right?
Goggins: Yeah. He's been back several times. I saw him last night actually, and we're still very, very good friends, and it is, I mean, as sad as we all were about the writers making that decision ultimately I think that we all saw the genius and the brilliance and Shakespearean quality of what this really meant. It is betrayal. It can be argued that it was a lot of different things. Maybe it was betrayal. Maybe it was seeing what your life was ultimately going to be like and getting you out of that, letting you out of that. But you know an actor can justify anything [Laughs]. But at the end of the day it was very, very painful thing for everyone involved. But it has propelled this show forward in a way that will see us through and will sustain us for the next two years and so we're very, very thankful for the opportunity.
Question: Is [Michael] Chiklis sort of the captain of the team as far as the actors on the show go? Is he the sort of quarter back?
Goggins: He is the quarter back. He sets the tone for the show and you can't run a show like this and do the amount of scenes that we do with the content that we have in the amount of time that we have without a Clydesdale sort of pulling you through it. He is our Clydesdale for sure. I think that he's lucky, and I think that we're all lucky, to have a very deep bench. You can throw the ball to anyone on our team on any given day and they're going to hit a homerun or they're going to score a touchdown, man. They're going to hit a homerun. I think that we all respect each other's work so much, and Michael respects all of us so much that we enable him to take charge. He knows that he has this great group of people behind him.
Question: In the cast, who would you like to have more scenes with and mix it up a little bit more with?
Goggins: Jay Karnes. He's my favorite actor on the show. Jay Karnes is my favorite actor on the show. I mean, we've had a couple of things together a while back in the show, and we have become good friends, but I like the dynamic of Shane and Dutch. It's very different and that's an energy that I don't come into contact with very often. So that'd be fun.
Question: The vultures are circling around the strike team at this point on the show. Do you see the series, rather than trying to push it beyond seven seasons or ten seasons because it's a show that has ratings, having a finite ending?
Goggins: The seventh season will be it. That'll be it for the show.
Question: Do you have any inkling on where it's going to go? Have they filled you in at all?
Goggins: No. I don't. I really don't. And we've talked about it. [David Rees] Snell and I talked about it two days ago. I don't know where it's going to go from week to week, to be quite honest with you. Just when I think that I have it figured out, just when I think, 'Okay, this is what I'm going to be doing next week.' I get the script and open that present and it's completely different than I ever thought that it was going to be. What do you think? What's your take?
Question: I think that if I were in charge and looked ahead, I would love to see Claudette be the one to take down the strike team because she is the most honest cop there. She is the most noble cop there.
Goggins: She is.
Question: I see Vic going to prison. I see Shane going into witness protection and I see Ronnie getting out totally unscathed.
Goggins: Completely. He was the smart one.
Question: He was the quiet one. He will make the smart deal and will get out of it.
Goggins: Yeah. With more money than all of us.
Question: But I do see that Vic will pay some kind of price whether it's prison or death.
Goggins: Yeah. But I would argue that I think with the killing of Lem that we have already paid the ultimate price, and that's what this season is about, and it's really about – on other shows if someone dies it's dealt with in one episodes or two episodes, and in this fictional world that we've created and have tried to maintain, this reverberates throughout the entire season and will reverberate throughout the rest of the show because that's the reality of it all. That's exciting and that has been so exciting for me as an actor.
Question: Will we see Lem in flashbacks or will we see him in dream sequences?
Goggins: I'm not going to tell you.
Question: Okay. I'll take that as a maybe.
Goggins: And I'll tell you that, and I'll say that Shawn [Ryan] does things that other people don't, that other people do not do. So you'll be surprised.
Question: What do you hear from cops when you run into real life cops? What do they say to you?
Goggins: They love the show. Cops love the show. I think that more than anything else they see it for it's entertainment value. It's not something that they can do or would do, but they get a laugh out of us having the license to do those kinds of things. So it really is, for me, no longer about Rampart or about the Los Angeles Police Department and there are no parallels or comparisons to be made at this point. 'The Shield' is a world in and of it's own, and I think that they, like so many people, get this sense of anxiety and rush and exhaustion through one hour of their life during the week that they don't get from other outlets. I think that we provide a form of entertainment for them that they enjoy.
Question: Have you ever done ride alongs with real cops?
Goggins: I have. Yeah.
Question: What was that like for you? I was in Beverly Hills when I did it and so it wasn't too scary.
Goggins: Yeah. I mean, I have the utmost respect for these guys. I mean, I've been out with them three or four nights and nothing major happened. Well, a shooting happened which was a pretty major event, but no one was injured. It was like shots were fired, but to see the tactical approach these guys had and to see how well oiled this machine is fascinating because the situation is never the same. However, they're communicating based on their experience about what this potential map could be and how they're going to approach it. For us, we take that into our work, and that's the thing that I think, in addition to everything else, that we're most proud of on the show. They're very, very particular, police officers that I've encountered and they've had nothing, but praise on the procedural kind of aspects to the show and kind of how we do our approaches. I don't think that anyone does it better on television.
Question: Has it ever gotten you out of any speeding tickets?
Goggins: No! And I've used it. I've used it. I've tried to. I'm like, 'You know, I'm on "The Shield."' I've gotten out of one. I've gotten out of one speeding ticket in New Mexico, but for the most part they say, 'Yeah, buddy, but still you ran a stop sign.' So that's funny.
Question: What has the show done for your career? Do you get a lot of offers and do you try and balance things with your commitments to the show?
Goggins: I do, yeah. I mean, my partners and I have had a production company for a long time. I've done twenty five movies. I've done a lot of film before 'The Shield' and so what this has done for me is allow people to connect the dots. 'Oh my God, that's him in "The Apostle." That's Shane in "High Noon" and him in this and that and this and that.' So it's allowing people to kind of make that connection, but my partners and I have a production company and we've won an Academy Award for our short film, and our first feature went to Sundance and we just finished our second feature this past summer. So we're mixing it now and hopefully it'll be out in the spring. So it's allowed me, this notoriety, to kind of do the things that I wanted to do as a filmmaker.
Question: Now the serious fans are about as passionate as they come?
Goggins: Yes.
Question: What do you hear from the fans when they recognize you on the street?
Goggins: You know what, I've heard some funny shit. This is honest to God the best story in the world. I was walking down the street in New York and you get the look in people's eyes, and I was in a place where I didn't want to speak to anyone so I walk right past them and walk into a store. I come out and a guy comes up to me and says, 'Speak! Speak!' I said, 'Get out of my face!' He said, 'No. I'm sorry. I've only heard you in Italian. I've never heard your English voice.' I said, 'Oh my God. Hey, how are you doing?' And we've had the best conversation, and I've been to Morocco. I've all over Europe. I just got back from Panama, South America and at a bizarre in Morocco, in Marrakech someone says, '"The Shield."' I mean, it such a universal thing now because it's just such a big show in other countries. I mean, we have our following here, but other countries seem to like it too. It's really been an incredible experience.
Question: Can you talk about how Forrest Whitaker was this explosion on the last season and brought the show to even extra heights?
Goggins: Yeah. I mean, for us and for everyone on the show in particular, press is not a fiduciary responsibility, but way to get our message out which is that we're actors, man. And for us it's about showing up every week and Forrest Whitaker, are you kidding me? He started that. He is for his generation arguably one of the best actors working today and we all have such reverence and respect for him that when he showed up with his A game we all get nervous. When Glenn [Close] came on and then when Forrest came on, when all of these other kind of actors come on we get nervous and have to raise our game even more. So it's just been an incredible experience for us all.
Question: Anyone coming on the show this season that is that kind of name?
Goggins: Well, no, but Franka Potenta and all of my stuff is with her. She is a delightful actor, wonderful actor. So we've had an incredible experience, man. It's been six years of bliss.
Walton Goggins Interview For 'The Shield'
Question: What a season you guys had last year. It's my favorite show on television.
Goggins: Thank you. It's not without a lot of work that happens. What's on the screen is really there. Everyone shows up with their A game every single day and we expect and will not accept anything less.
Question: What's going on with your character this year? Is there a bit of a death wish going on?
Goggins: Well, I don't know that it's just an over death wish. I think that it's just an insane amount of grief having done what he did and the inability to compartmentalize it the way that Vic is able to compartmentalize his transgressions. Shane can't do that. He has been able to do that in the past to a certain extent, but he's committed an act that he will have a very, very hard time forgiving himself for.
Question: He's hard wired to his emotions in a way that Vic is not.
Goggins: That's right.
Question: As a coworker of Kenny [Johnson] was it easy to tap into those emotions because you guys have been through all the shows together?
Goggins: Well, he's been a friend of mine for a long time and when we began that journey together and saw it in black and white, I just said to him, 'I would want no one to have this honor, but me.' It is an honor to say goodbye to someone who has been so, so important to me as an actor and to the success of this show. So oddly enough as cheeky as this may sound we held hands and we said, 'Lets do this, man.' It was at four o'clock in the morning and I remember kind of holding his hand before every take and after the grenade went off, and everything that kind of happened from there forward. It was very, very painful, but we went through it as brothers and as friends and we're still very, very good friends today.
Question: And you guys have had him back, right?
Goggins: Yeah. He's been back several times. I saw him last night actually, and we're still very, very good friends, and it is, I mean, as sad as we all were about the writers making that decision ultimately I think that we all saw the genius and the brilliance and Shakespearean quality of what this really meant. It is betrayal. It can be argued that it was a lot of different things. Maybe it was betrayal. Maybe it was seeing what your life was ultimately going to be like and getting you out of that, letting you out of that. But you know an actor can justify anything [Laughs]. But at the end of the day it was very, very painful thing for everyone involved. But it has propelled this show forward in a way that will see us through and will sustain us for the next two years and so we're very, very thankful for the opportunity.
Question: Is [Michael] Chiklis sort of the captain of the team as far as the actors on the show go? Is he the sort of quarter back?
Goggins: He is the quarter back. He sets the tone for the show and you can't run a show like this and do the amount of scenes that we do with the content that we have in the amount of time that we have without a Clydesdale sort of pulling you through it. He is our Clydesdale for sure. I think that he's lucky, and I think that we're all lucky, to have a very deep bench. You can throw the ball to anyone on our team on any given day and they're going to hit a homerun or they're going to score a touchdown, man. They're going to hit a homerun. I think that we all respect each other's work so much, and Michael respects all of us so much that we enable him to take charge. He knows that he has this great group of people behind him.
Question: In the cast, who would you like to have more scenes with and mix it up a little bit more with?
Goggins: Jay Karnes. He's my favorite actor on the show. Jay Karnes is my favorite actor on the show. I mean, we've had a couple of things together a while back in the show, and we have become good friends, but I like the dynamic of Shane and Dutch. It's very different and that's an energy that I don't come into contact with very often. So that'd be fun.
Question: The vultures are circling around the strike team at this point on the show. Do you see the series, rather than trying to push it beyond seven seasons or ten seasons because it's a show that has ratings, having a finite ending?
Goggins: The seventh season will be it. That'll be it for the show.
Question: Do you have any inkling on where it's going to go? Have they filled you in at all?
Goggins: No. I don't. I really don't. And we've talked about it. [David Rees] Snell and I talked about it two days ago. I don't know where it's going to go from week to week, to be quite honest with you. Just when I think that I have it figured out, just when I think, 'Okay, this is what I'm going to be doing next week.' I get the script and open that present and it's completely different than I ever thought that it was going to be. What do you think? What's your take?
Question: I think that if I were in charge and looked ahead, I would love to see Claudette be the one to take down the strike team because she is the most honest cop there. She is the most noble cop there.
Goggins: She is.
Question: I see Vic going to prison. I see Shane going into witness protection and I see Ronnie getting out totally unscathed.
Goggins: Completely. He was the smart one.
Question: He was the quiet one. He will make the smart deal and will get out of it.
Goggins: Yeah. With more money than all of us.
Question: But I do see that Vic will pay some kind of price whether it's prison or death.
Goggins: Yeah. But I would argue that I think with the killing of Lem that we have already paid the ultimate price, and that's what this season is about, and it's really about – on other shows if someone dies it's dealt with in one episodes or two episodes, and in this fictional world that we've created and have tried to maintain, this reverberates throughout the entire season and will reverberate throughout the rest of the show because that's the reality of it all. That's exciting and that has been so exciting for me as an actor.
Question: Will we see Lem in flashbacks or will we see him in dream sequences?
Goggins: I'm not going to tell you.
Question: Okay. I'll take that as a maybe.
Goggins: And I'll tell you that, and I'll say that Shawn [Ryan] does things that other people don't, that other people do not do. So you'll be surprised.
Question: What do you hear from cops when you run into real life cops? What do they say to you?
Goggins: They love the show. Cops love the show. I think that more than anything else they see it for it's entertainment value. It's not something that they can do or would do, but they get a laugh out of us having the license to do those kinds of things. So it really is, for me, no longer about Rampart or about the Los Angeles Police Department and there are no parallels or comparisons to be made at this point. 'The Shield' is a world in and of it's own, and I think that they, like so many people, get this sense of anxiety and rush and exhaustion through one hour of their life during the week that they don't get from other outlets. I think that we provide a form of entertainment for them that they enjoy.
Question: Have you ever done ride alongs with real cops?
Goggins: I have. Yeah.
Question: What was that like for you? I was in Beverly Hills when I did it and so it wasn't too scary.
Goggins: Yeah. I mean, I have the utmost respect for these guys. I mean, I've been out with them three or four nights and nothing major happened. Well, a shooting happened which was a pretty major event, but no one was injured. It was like shots were fired, but to see the tactical approach these guys had and to see how well oiled this machine is fascinating because the situation is never the same. However, they're communicating based on their experience about what this potential map could be and how they're going to approach it. For us, we take that into our work, and that's the thing that I think, in addition to everything else, that we're most proud of on the show. They're very, very particular, police officers that I've encountered and they've had nothing, but praise on the procedural kind of aspects to the show and kind of how we do our approaches. I don't think that anyone does it better on television.
Question: Has it ever gotten you out of any speeding tickets?
Goggins: No! And I've used it. I've used it. I've tried to. I'm like, 'You know, I'm on "The Shield."' I've gotten out of one. I've gotten out of one speeding ticket in New Mexico, but for the most part they say, 'Yeah, buddy, but still you ran a stop sign.' So that's funny.
Question: What has the show done for your career? Do you get a lot of offers and do you try and balance things with your commitments to the show?
Goggins: I do, yeah. I mean, my partners and I have had a production company for a long time. I've done twenty five movies. I've done a lot of film before 'The Shield' and so what this has done for me is allow people to connect the dots. 'Oh my God, that's him in "The Apostle." That's Shane in "High Noon" and him in this and that and this and that.' So it's allowing people to kind of make that connection, but my partners and I have a production company and we've won an Academy Award for our short film, and our first feature went to Sundance and we just finished our second feature this past summer. So we're mixing it now and hopefully it'll be out in the spring. So it's allowed me, this notoriety, to kind of do the things that I wanted to do as a filmmaker.
Question: Now the serious fans are about as passionate as they come?
Goggins: Yes.
Question: What do you hear from the fans when they recognize you on the street?
Goggins: You know what, I've heard some funny shit. This is honest to God the best story in the world. I was walking down the street in New York and you get the look in people's eyes, and I was in a place where I didn't want to speak to anyone so I walk right past them and walk into a store. I come out and a guy comes up to me and says, 'Speak! Speak!' I said, 'Get out of my face!' He said, 'No. I'm sorry. I've only heard you in Italian. I've never heard your English voice.' I said, 'Oh my God. Hey, how are you doing?' And we've had the best conversation, and I've been to Morocco. I've all over Europe. I just got back from Panama, South America and at a bizarre in Morocco, in Marrakech someone says, '"The Shield."' I mean, it such a universal thing now because it's just such a big show in other countries. I mean, we have our following here, but other countries seem to like it too. It's really been an incredible experience.
Question: Can you talk about how Forrest Whitaker was this explosion on the last season and brought the show to even extra heights?
Goggins: Yeah. I mean, for us and for everyone on the show in particular, press is not a fiduciary responsibility, but way to get our message out which is that we're actors, man. And for us it's about showing up every week and Forrest Whitaker, are you kidding me? He started that. He is for his generation arguably one of the best actors working today and we all have such reverence and respect for him that when he showed up with his A game we all get nervous. When Glenn [Close] came on and then when Forrest came on, when all of these other kind of actors come on we get nervous and have to raise our game even more. So it's just been an incredible experience for us all.
Question: Anyone coming on the show this season that is that kind of name?
Goggins: Well, no, but Franka Potenta and all of my stuff is with her. She is a delightful actor, wonderful actor. So we've had an incredible experience, man. It's been six years of bliss.