Timothy Olyphant Revealed Which Hatless Role Left Him ‘Freaking Out Inside’ During His Early Career

Justified‘s Raylan Givens is the role that Timothy Olyphant was born to portray. Granted, Deadwood (as seen above) was a hat-bound precursor to the even more infamous Wild West lawman character that Olyphant has now revived for City Primeval. Many more roles came before, some with hats and some without. Yet one role in particular seems to have intimidated the heck out of the generally laid-back Olyphant, and that would be picking up one of the two “killer” roles (Mickey) for 1997’s Scream 2.

Via ComicBook, this was one of several topics discussed by Olyphant with Josh Horowitz of the Happy Sad Confused podcast:

“That whole movie was overwhelming and exciting, and that’s early. That’s me just trying to keep my head above water and pretend like I’m not freaking out inside. That was quite a job. I was still maybe lying on my resume when I got that gig; I hadn’t done a lot…. Huge opportunity, and I showed up and everybody on that set was people I’d been watching on television and film.”

A few years later, Olyphant picked up the role of a Santa-hat wearing, scuzzed-out drug dealer in Go by pretending that he didn’t care about the role. Many years later, he found his hat camouflage roles, and now, he always appears to be one easygoing dude. The hat helps, no doubt.

Watch him talk about Scream shortly after the 33:00 minute mark.