In his first discussion of the incident since it happened, actor Timothy Olyphant has gone into detail about the shooting incident in July last year during filming in Chicago on the revival series “Justified: City Primeval”.
At the time it was reported that at least two cars, whose occupants were engaged in a gunfight, smashed through the production’s barricades near Douglass Park on that night of filming. No one was injured, including Olyphant who was present at the time.
Making an appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, Olyphant talked about the night. He said the cast and crew were accustomed to hearing gunshots as they had already filmed in some ‘bad neighborhoods’ of Chicago.
It was different this time as they could hear the trouble heading right for them:
“It was the scariest goddamn thing. It went on forever. You realize they’re coming around the park. If the gunshots didn’t already give you a tip about what kind of people we are dealing with, they completely ignored the road closed sign which says filming, don’t come this way.”
Olyphant said he got a peek at the shooters in the second car, one shooting a clearly “modified” pistol, the other stood on a sunroof and fired a machine gun.
“It was so frightening. I assumed one was going to hit me. You’re just waiting… It’s the weirdest thing, I’m wearing the Raylan [Givens] wardrobe standing behind this car. This is just like the show. It’s so weird. What am I doing?”
A week later he spoke with a cop who was on the scene that night who told him:
“It was one of the closer calls he ever had. He said in those situations, they’re like us, they are going to take cover since [the bad guys] are shooting at each other with machine guns. Engaging in any way just becomes a bigger mess. It was f—ed up. It was definitely crazy. People will say I seemed really chill [in the moment]. That’s funny because that’s not the way I remembered it.”
When production was supposed to shoot the next night in “another bad part of town,” Olyphant says he spoke up: “I feel like I should speak up. I don’t want to shoot. I’m assuming the crew doesn’t want to shoot. That was the more emotional day.”
It was reported that after the incident a trained hostage negotiator and a team of former Navy SEALs and Army Rangers came on set to deal with subsequent location shoots and make them as safe as possible for filming.
The eight-episode limited series will premiere this Summer.
