‘Justified’ Ending Not Yet Set , EP Graham Yost Says – TCA

“We don’t have the ending yet,” Justified EP Graham Yost said today of the show that’s starting its final FX season Tuesday. “We’ve shot [episode] 10, and have a script for 11 … And we’re outlining 12, and then get to 13.”

“We’ve all been talking about it. But Elmore didn’t outline,” Yost said at Winter TV Press Tour 2015. The prolific crime writer Elmore Leonard, who died in August 2013, wrote the novels that are the basis for the series, which stars Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens.

“He’d just start writing and then, if he did not like where it was going, he’d throw out the pages and start again,” Yost said. “You can’t do that with a television show, except…when doing an ending. We have to do it quickly, but we absolutely don’t know how it’s going to end yet.”

This being the show’s final Press Tour Q&A, Olyphant got asked to navel gaze about what the series’ end means to him.

“All I’m prepared for –  I’m unemployed and I’m going to have to say ‘yes’ to some shitty-a** jobs,” he said. “All those jobs I’ve said, ‘No,’ to in the last five years, I’m going to say, ‘Yes,’ to. F***!”

A critic later asked the show writers/EPs how they thought the show ending was going to work out for Olyphant.

“Finally someone asked a good question: how’s it gonna work out for me?” Olyphant joked, maybe. “My wife is asking the same: ‘Now what the f***, Tim?'”

“I think Tim can do whatever he wants. He’s smart,” EP Michael Dinner said, telling the actor they would “get you out of the house.”

“I got to work – the kids. Three of them. Jesus,” Olyphant said, uncomfortable-makingly.

Yost added he hoped someone would cast Olyphant in something that took advantage of all the skills he displayed on Justified.

“And then, there’s the dancing,” Olyphant chimed in.

One year ago this month, FX CEO John Landgraf confirmed Justified would end its run with Season 6, explaining the decision had been made by Yost and Olyphant. 

“A lot of it was just figuring out how much story we had left,” Yost said back then.  “Our biggest concern telling these stories is that we don’t run out of story and start repeating ourselves. Although there were financial incentives to keep it going, it really felt in terms of the story of Raylan Givens in Kentucky, that six years felt about right.”