Walton Goggins sticks to ABCs in playing mercurial bad guy on 'Justified'

Things always get interesting when Boyd Crowder is on the scene.

He's the mercurial bad guy played by Walton Goggins in Justified, which begins its third season at 9 p.m. Tuesday on FX.

Justified, the Kentucky hill country crime drama starring Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, simply wouldn't be Justified without Boyd Crowder.

With his crazy eyes, his wild hair and his unpredictable outlaw ways, he's a fan favorite. He's as charismatic and magnetic as all get-out, even when he's doing the most reprehensible things.

Boyd's secret? Like Goggins, he's a guy who never forgot his ABCs: "Always Be Cool."

We talked with Goggins about his character and about the show.

Is it true the original plan was for Raylan to kill Boyd in the pilot episode of the series?

"That was the foregone conclusion going in. Boyd dies at the end of the short story, 'Fire in the Hole,' by Elmore Leonard, which was the source material for the series. So that was to be the beginning, the middle and the end of Boyd, that one episode. It was a one-off. But there was something there. Casting is such an ephemeral thing. But for me, with Tim, I knew the first time we read through it and the very first time we started shooting that we had a chemistry that was pretty extraordinary. So instead of killing Boyd, we put our heads together and we decided, 'Let's see where this goes.' So Boyd lives."

Boyd is so unpredictable. He started out as a white supremacist criminal, then reinvented himself as a born-again evangelist; he tried to go straight, then rejoiced when he broke bad again. He has a code, but the rules to his code shift with the wind. Have you figured him out yet?

"I would say he's a man who likes to live in extremes. And the changes of those extremes bring about a new set of moral principles. He's only comfortable on the fringes. He's a showman, and it's very rare that you get a straight sentence out of him. When you do, hopefully it's impactful. But I really don't know how Boyd is going to react in any situation, even with the words on the page. It really only materializes once we're at work and actually shooting the scene."

Well, if you don't know how a scene will play out until you do it, imagine how interested the writers must be, waiting to see what this wild man will do next?

"They really never know either till we shoot it. But I try not to characterize Boyd as a wild man."

No, you're the wild man.

"Me? Like, Walton Goggins, me? I'm the wild man? I don't know. Maybe. I think it's more about, 'This is the story, and we've got to get from A to B. But who knows the mode of transportation? Are we going to walk to get there or are we going to take an airplane?' I remember one episode from Season 2. Boyd is dealing with people who want to rob the mine, and they want to kill him. When he gets this information, he's cool about it, like nothing happened. And I kept playing around with the line, improvising different things, and then I got it: 'You want to make a living in this business, you've got to know your ABCs: Always Be Cool.' That was the motto of my graduating class, Lithia Springs High School, Class of '89. The point is, you never know where the right thing to do or say will come from till you get there."

Is it liberating to be able to channel all of your dark impulses into your performance?

"It's better than having a therapist. It's so nice to come home every night with a grin on my face."