(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – Justified star Timothy Olyphant is talking in detail about the shooting that disrupted and temporarily shut down production of a revival of the crime series as it was filming in Chicago’s Douglass Park last summer.
Olyphant recounted the potentially deadly interruption to Conan O’Brien on a recent podcast. Olyphant said real gunfire erupted early in the morning as he was preparing to film a scene in character as a federal marshal.
When everyone on the set heard a second round of nearby gunfire, Olyphant said an assistant director told everyone to drop to the ground for safety.
“It was the scariest goddamned thing. It went on forever,” the actor said.
Olyphant said even more gunshots erupted and cars came around the park, “heading right towards us.”
“They completely ignored the ‘Road Closed’ sign,” he said.
During what sounded like “machine gun fire," Olyphant said he threw a production assistant to the ground. Another PA dove behind a car shortly before bullets shattered the bus shelter he’d been sitting in, he said.
Two cars raced by, with the second car firing at the one in front of it. Recalls Olyphant: “There’s a guy shooting a pistol out the window that’s clearly been modified because it’s like ‘bap, bap, bap, bap.’ And the other guy’s out the sun roof with a little machine gun ... And those guys go by at like 100 miles an hour.”
“There’s no law enforcement coming in at any point?” O’Brien asks.
“I feel that we were a little understaffed,” Olyphant said.
The actor said a police officer who was at the production scene later told him that a bullet had gone through his sleeve, though he was not injured. Olyphant estimated 100 rounds were fired. He said the production company decided to temporarily halt filming after the scare.
Olyphant returns to the role of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in Justified: City Primeval, which is based on a classic 1980 Elmore Leonard novel set in Detroit. Leonard created the character of Givens, who was not in City Primeval.
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