To hear Timothy Olyphant tell it, playing speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-Glock Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified is like shooting fish in a proverbial barrel. "I hesitate to say this, but I find the acting to be a piece of cake," he confesses. "Good writing is always pretty easy to do. Bad writing is hard to act, hard to memorize, hard to figure out what the f--- you're doing. When it's well written, it gives you a lot of room to play."
It's clear to the nearly four million Oly-fans who tune in to FX's adaptation of crime-novel mastermind Elmore Leonard's work each week that everybody involved is having a blast. "Elmore doesn't know how to write anything that's not cool," Olyphant raves of the Get Shorty/Be Cool/Out of Sight author. "When it really cooks, it's just a great job."
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The fall TV season is taking shape.
Networks have ordered dozens of new pilots starring familiar
faces like Tim
Allen, Chelsea
Handler, Debra
Messing, and from proven producers like Josh
Schwartz, J.J.
Abrams and Ron
Moore (Battlestar
Galactica).
To keep track
of who's doing what, read our complete list of all the series
projects in contention and check back for updates on their
status.
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It started with a drive around Lower Manhattan last June. On the eve of the sixth season of NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET), star Vincent D'Onofrio told the executive producer he wanted the drama to be "more than just a straight procedural." After 100 episodes spent profiling coldhearted killers, "Vince said, 'Give me something personal to chew on. I want Detective Goren to face deep human emotions,'" says Warren Leight, the producer in the passenger seat that day.
This season, D'Onofrio got his wish. Oscar winner Rita Moreno was cast as Frances Goren, the detective's strong-willed, mentally ill mother who had been a crucial but unseen presence in Rober
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