'Justified' Postmortem: Graham Yost Talks the Rat and the Rise of Loretta in 'Burned'

Spoiler alert! If you haven’t watched the March 17 episode of Justified — “Burned,” written by Dave Andron, Leonard Chang, and Jenny DeArmitt and directed by Don Kurt — stop reading now. As he’ll do throughout the season, showrunner Graham Yost takes Yahoo TV inside the writers’ room to break down key scenes and tease what’s next.

Did you always know Wynn (Jere Burns) would turn out to be the rat?
You know, we would just jump into these things and have debates. “We’ll figure it out when it comes along.” I remember doing a lot of scribbling on my yellow pad and bringing it to the room, and of course, [executive producer] Ben Cavell saying, “Yeah, OK, Wynn Duffy. I got it,” like he’d already guessed that. But I think the way I presented it to the room was such that, of course, it made sense that it would be Duffy. In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine any other possibility. He was just the right guy, and it fits with his character.

I loved that Mikey (Jonathan Kowalsky) is having a hard time dealing with Wynn being a rat. That’s something we’re going to see continue to play out?
Yes.

I don’t want Mikey to die, Graham. You can’t kill Mikey.
No, we can’t.

Really, or are you just saying that?
You’ll find out.

The return of Wynn’s tanning bed and Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Art (Nick Searcy) using it as a weapon when they came to secure his help — very fun.
Primarily, that was a Dave scene, so it was Dave working it out with Tim and Jere and Nick. It had several different incarnations, but using the tanning bed as a weapon was pretty early on.

Related: Graham Yost on the Dungeon, Death, and Real Harlan DJ

In a previous postmortem, you said the tennis bracelet Katherine (Mary Steenburgen) stole would come back into play. Pretending she was getting it out of her purse to pay off Seabass (Scott Grimes), and instead shooting him — did not guess that’s what you meant.
I’ve always wanted her to shoot through a purse. I’ve always thought that was a nice way for someone to get to a weapon. You’re just waiting to see what comes out, and what comes out is a bullet at a very high speed. It was also fun for Scott Grimes to be killed by Mary Steenburgen.

We went back and forth. We had a version where she shot him once, and it was just a smaller gun, like a one-shot deal, and then Markham finished Seabass off. That was part of the back and forth with Sam [Elliott] on that one, because he had a concern about this episode. You know, we get into the bit where he’s kind of outshone by a teenage girl. But anyway, this was ultimately Sam saying, “Oh, let’s give it to Mary. Let’s have Mary do it.”

Now, back at the beginning of Mary Steenburgen signing on to the show, she was talking to [executive producer] Fred [Golan], and she basically got out of Fred the promise that she would get to shoot someone. We were fulfilling that promise.

There’s that look on Markham’s face as he sees Katherine in front of a wall covered in brains. How should we read that?
He’s shocked, he’s impressed, and just the tiniest bit afraid. I mean, he knows that she’s a criminal woman and capable of this kind of thing. Don’t forget, he said to Ava back in the third episode, for a woman to survive in this business, she has to be harder than a man. He understands that, but this is the woman he loves, and there she is having shot this man twice. He has to pay attention.

Katherine speaks French when she calls her cleaner. Is there a story there?
It’s just a little nod to Pulp Fiction — Harvey Keitel played the cleaner — and I also think of the Keanu Reeves film last fall, John Wick, where there’s just this feeling that there’s this other world, and you can make a phone call, and everything is taken care of. The idea of her speaking French as sort of a code was a fun thing.

Tell me about the new character Boon (Jonathan Tucker). He feels like a different kind of henchman for Markham, obviously. Like he’s slightly unhinged. He reminds me a bit of Season 3′s Fletcher “Ice Pick” Nix, who really wanted to have a go at Raylan. What was the inspiration for Boon?
We wanted the henchman for Markham to be someone of note that we could build up, and when we made the deal with Garret Dillahunt [to play Ty Walker], we knew we could only use him through Christmas because he had to go back to his Amazon show, Hand of God. So we said, “OK, we’ll make that deal, but then we’re going to have to bring in someone else, because it can’t just be Markham alone.” You need to have the henchman.

So we thought of this character, a young gun who is every bit as fast as Raylan. I won’t say where we’re going, but I think you can imagine that there will be a problem in Raylan’s future because of this kid. We thought of various actors, and then there was someone we were looking at, and the clip that was sent over was a scene from an NBC show from eight years ago called The Black Donnellys, around the time Fred Golan, Taylor [Elmore], Dave, and I were doing Raines.

There was this scene between this other actor and this guy, and I went, “I know that guy. What about him?” I called up Cami [Patton], our casting person, and I said, “What about —” and she said, “Jonathan Tucker.” And I said, “Yes, what’s going on with him?” She said, “Well, he’s doing another show, so limited availability.” We decided to roll the dice and take a chance, knowing we wanted him, basically, for the rest of the season but that we might only get him for three episodes. He reminded me that he had been pretty deep in the whole casting process on The Pacific, and I regret we didn’t use him then, because he’s an amazing actor.

Related: Graham Yost on Winona’s Return, Ava’s Camping Trip in ‘The Hunt’

Andron really got the shot at creating Boon, but as is always the case on Justified, to a degree, it’s a collaborative thing. Jonathan really got into it, and he came up with the idea of Boon having these rings on his fingers, and he’s always sort of playing with them. He wanted a six-shooter — he didn’t want an automatic, he wanted a revolver — and his classic western get up.

It was probably Dave and Jenny and Leonard who came up with the idea that he would appear without us knowing who the hell he was. He would just pop into the show in the scene at Loretta’s, and we would find out in a subsequent scene who he was. The biggest contention of the whole thing was whether or not his name was spelled with an “e” at the end, and it is not. Andron was very specific. We’re still not sure why, but we like it.

After Boon threatened Loretta (Kaitlyn Dever), she went to Boyd (Walton Goggins), and he granted her protection and his blessing to buy everyone’s land. What did you like about that twist?
We knew that Loretta was going to be in a bit of a jam, and Raylan had said to her, “You should get a couple armed guys to stand outside for a while because you poked the bear in Markham.” We knew we wanted to see more of dear Loretta, have her be part of the whole final run of the series, and someone in the room said, “What if she partnered up with Boyd?”

Part of it was, we also wanted to have a moment where Boyd does something that’s kind of cool that Ava would appreciate — which is him backing this kid. So then later on, when Ava totally confesses to Raylan what’s going on, it’s a bit more of a surprise. There was a bunch of things coming together.

Let’s get to the party that Markham and fiancée Katherine threw at the Pizza Portal so Avery could try to win over the town. You have all these people who essentially want to kill each other in one room, in public, so you’re just waiting to see what happens.
Don Kurt, our director, who’s also an executive producer on the show, was concerned about having to shoot that much interior. You know, he wants to get out on location and blow s—t up. But he just buckled down and found a great way to do it, so everything kind of hands off one bit to another.

Related: Graham Yost on the Death (and Easter Egg) in ‘Alive Day’

We knew we wanted to do one of those big public gathering scenes that we haven’t done in a couple of seasons, really. It felt like this was going to be our last chance. We really wanted to set it up where you think it’s going to be the classic Boyd Crowder coming out and wowing everyone with his rhetoric, and we thought, “Well, let’s go against that expectation. Let’s have a tiny glimpse of that, but let’s not have it be Boyd, let’s have it be Loretta.”

The whole idea of Loretta saying, “My partner is Boyd Crowder,” was a complete surprise to me, and I don’t think it was in the outline. It was something that just popped up as an idea in the first draft of the script. When we’re mid-production on this show — when we were in mid-production — things are flying pretty fast. So the writers will try something in the first draft that we haven’t even worked out.

I think I told you last week about Chris Provenzano and the scene with Arlo being something that he just came up with late in the game. That idea of Loretta throwing in with Boyd is one of those things, like, “Well, that’s interesting, and it’s smart, and let’s see where it goes.”

I suppose, ultimately, the big intent of the scene was that we would see Loretta emerging a little bit as a young Mags, and then there would be echoes of the scene in Season 2 at the Town Hall meeting when Mags gets up and sways the crowd with her.

You referenced the scene between Raylan and Ava (Joelle Carter) at the party. She knew that he’d figured out what Boyd was doing and filled in the blanks.
We went back and forth on that scene a lot. When we first saw it in post, I was concerned that it wasn’t clear enough what was going on. I think it came together quite well. He said at the end of episode eight, “She’s burned,” just because he knows her. Then the flip side of that, and this was really more Tim’s idea than anything, is that as much as he knows her, she knows him, and she can tell he knows… You’re still not sure what side she’s on, but at least for this moment, you see that she is leaning towards Raylan. But that will change a couple of times before that’s resolved.

Zachariah (Jeff Fahey) tried to kill Boyd by chaining him near their explosion in the mine. Fans who follow Walton on Instagram know he was also filming another Tarantino movie while Justified was still in production. Was any part of you hoping fans might seriously worry that Boyd Crowder’s going out in episode 9 of 13?
No. The remaining episodes would be people sitting around telling stories about Boyd. Don Kurt knew how to shoot that scene, and Walton knew how to play it, and Dave, Leonard, and Jenny knew how to write it. I think a lot of that was Leonard in the mine. You have to have things just out of reach. You’re almost able to get to the burning wick. You’re almost able to get to the hammer… that’s where the tension is, and that’s what makes it fun. Walton was just doing a great job selling it.

Related: Graham Yost on the Kiss and the Cattle Prod in ‘Sounding’

In classic Bond villain fashion, Zachariah should have just hit him over the head with a sledgehammer and killed him, but you know, he wanted him to blow up. We would always, in the room, just revert to doing scenes from Austin Powers. “I’ll just go get a gun.”

It was fun for Don Kurt and everyone to have a fireball going off in our soundstage on our mine set. It’s a big ball of propane and you hope that nothing else catches fire, but it’s very well designed and looked pretty good. It was fun to hear back from Leonard, “Oh, it was awesome.” And it was.

The shot of Wynn coming out of the mine coughing was hilarious. How did that moment come together?
It was something we found in editing, because there were versions where Wynn was [already] up. There was a lot of movement in and out of that entrance, and we just focused it down to that version, which felt like it had the best pop to it.

In the end, Raylan realized the one thing he couldn’t plan for was the “dips—ts” not being able to pull off the heist.
That’s a classic Raylan snark. The reality is, it wasn’t so much Boyd not being able to pull it off, it was that he didn’t realize that he had hired someone who wanted to kill him.

Although, he did know that Zachariah wanted to kill him, but Boyd’s blind spot is he thinks that everyone is swayable by money, and something like money would overpower any animosity, and it didn’t. That was his mistake.

Related: Boyd Crowder on Yahoo TV’s 99 Greatest TV Characters Since Tony Soprano

Boyd confronted Ava, thinking she may have been part of Zachariah’s plan. But he seemed to believe her when she said she wasn’t. What can you tease about what’s next for those two?
Well, the only thing I would say is pay attention to how rough he is with her, and that’s a side we haven’t seen. He’s not Bowman, but he is a Crowder. Two episodes ago, he’s out in the woods: Was he going to kill her? He didn’t, but it was certainly on his mind.

It seems like next episode is set up for Markham to be moving his money and for Boyd to go for it then. Is that a safe assumption?
That is a safe assumption that that’s what you think the episode will be about.

Well played.
It is about the money. I can say that. I’m not going to give anymore away… The only thing I would give away is I believe there are some big surprises in that episode.

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.