Timothy Olyphantis one of the most prolific television actors of the past two decades, but some of his TV roles are more memorable than others.Olyphant often plays cops, but he’s played all kinds of roles. He’s played major roles in shows likeDeadwoodandJustified, as well as standout guest roles inCurb Your EnthusiasmandThe Office.
7Danny Cordray
The Office
Olyphant had a fun three-episode arc in Steve Carell’s last season ofThe Office, season 7. He played Danny Cordray,a charming salesman who could outsell the best salesmen at Dunder Mifflin — even Michael Scott — with his smoldering charisma and people skills. So, Michael set out to poach him.
Danny’s first episode — season 7, episode 5, “The Sting” — was great.Michael set up a fake sales call so he could spy on Danny and steal his best tricks, and the fake meeting kept getting derailed by Meredith’s on-the-nose flirtations and Ryan’s pretentious hipster references. If it stayed as a one-off appearance, it would’ve been a classic guest spot.
Danny probably shouldn’t have been a recurring role. Scranton didn’t even need a traveling salesman — they had Todd Packer — andevery joke was about how handsome he is, so it became very one-note very quickly. There was also a weird storyline where Jim forced Danny to explain why he never called Pam after going on a couple of dates.
6The Terminator
Terminator Zero
In the Japanese version of Netflix’s anime spinoffTerminator Zero, the Terminator was voiced by Yasuhiro Mamiya.But in the English version, Olyphant took the role. No one can replace Arnold Schwarzenegger as the definitive T-800, butOlyphant made for a fantastic Terminatorin this animated series.
InTerminator Zero, the cyborg killer is sent back in time to terminate Malcolm Lee, a scientist who’s working on an A.I. technology that could rival Skynet. He’s the primary antagonist of the series, sothe entire story hinges on the T-800 being a convincingly intimidating presence, feared by the audience — and Olyphant pulls it off.
His line readings are just as cold and emotionless as Schwarzenegger’s iconic turn in the role, butOlyphant puts his own spin on the iconic robo-assassin. He doesn’t just copy what Schwarzenegger did; he finds his own way into the machine.
5Mickey
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Olyphant guest-starred inCurb Your Enthusiasmseason 10, episode 4, “You’re Not Going to Get Me to Say Anything Bad About Mickey,” as the titular Mickey. The episode sees Larry and his friends flying to Cabo for Mickey’s destination wedding.When we meet Mickey, he’s an obscenely joyous man, and that’s why Jeff won’t say anything bad about him.
Curb Your Enthusiasmwas very hit-and-miss with its guest stars, because the show was made in such a unique way, with all the dialogue improvised from a tight story outline.Curb’s celebrity guest starseither fit the improvisational, cringe-inducing tone of the show perfectly (like Ben Stiller or Michael J. Fox or Lin-Manuel Miranda) or they didn’t.
He rounded out this distinctive comic character — a guy who’s so absurdly, over-the-top nice that it has to be fake — in beautifully subtle ways.
Thankfully, Olyphant was one of the guest stars who fit in with the show seamlessly.He rounded out this distinctive comic character — a guy who’s so absurdly, over-the-top nice that it has to be fake — in beautifully subtle ways, like when he gives everyone a big, enthusiastic hello… except Larry, who gets a quick “Hey.”
4Cobb Vanth
The Mandalorian/The Book of Boba Fett
Olyphant made hisStar Warsdebut as Cobb VanthinThe Mandalorian’s season 2 premiere, “Chapter 9: The Marshal.”Vanth is the eponymous marshal of a town on Tatooinecalled Mos Pelgo. The first time Vanth appeared on-screen, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Boba Fett, because Vanth wore Fett’s armor, having bought it from some Jawas.
Since the armor is Mandalorian and Vanth is not, Mando demands that he take it off. Vanth agrees to give up the armor if Mando helps him slay a Krayt Dragon that’s been terrorizing the townspeople.What follows is a classic, archetypal slay-the-dragon adventure tale with Mando and Vanth teaming up to vanquish a kaiju-sized space beast.
Vanth later reappeared in the spinoff,The Book of Boba Fett, where he had aHigh Noon-style armed standoff with Cad Bane on a dusty street. This role is a great play on Olyphant’s proclivity for playing western roles. Vanth is a typical western gunslinger marooned in a galaxy far, far away.
3Joel Hammond
Santa Clarita Diet
Olyphant starred alongside Drew Barrymore in the criminally underrated, sadly short-lived horror comedy seriesSanta Clarita Diet.They play Joel and Sheila, a pair of married real estate agents living seemingly mundane lives in the suburbs. That mundane existence is upended when Sheila gets infected with a zombie curse and becomes an undead monster craving human flesh.
Netflix canceledSanta Clarita Dietafter three seasons.
The episode uses a delightfully gruesome blood-and-guts-fest to satirize social norms and the holier-than-thou California attitude. As Sheila transforms into a flesh-eating zombie,Joel acts as the comic straight man trying to keep the peace, and Olyphant is hilarious in that role.
It’s a crying shame that Netflix canceled the show after three seasons.Not only didSanta Clarita Dietdeserve a much better ending; the season 3 finale’s cliffhanger seemed to tease that Joel would become a zombie monster himself in season 4, and it would’ve been a ton of fun to see Olyphant play that transformation.
2Sheriff Seth Bullock
Deadwood
HBO has become renowned for putting a gritty, subversive spin on iconic movie genres.The network brought a stark sense of realism to the gangster genre inThe Sopranos, it brought grounded political intrigue to the medieval fantasy genre inGame of Thrones, and it brought a historically accurate bleakness to the western genre inDeadwood.
Two decades later,Deadwoodis still one ofHBO’s best shows— and one of its most underrated shows. It tells the true story of Deadwood’s growth from a small encampment to a full-blown town in the 1870s. The sprawling ensemble cast included real-life historical figures, chief among them being Sheriff Seth Bullock,the role that put Olyphant on the map.
At the beginning of the series, Bullock leaves his job as a marshal in Montana to open a hardware store in Deadwood. Bullock is a good, honest man, which is starkly contrasted with Al Swearengen, who’s the exact opposite.The dramatic backbone of the show is Bullock’s uneasy alliance with Swearengen, played perfectly by Olyphant and co-star Ian McShane.
1U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens
Justified
Olyphant has played many iconic TV roles throughout his career, ranging from a real-life historical figure to aStar Warsgunslinger to the husband of a zombie. But by far the greatest TV character he’s played — and the one that will always define his career — is U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens from the neo-western gemJustified.
Raylan was created by Elmore Leonard, one of the greatest crime fiction writers who ever lived and one of the all-time best dialogue writers, for his short story “Fire in the Hole.” The story inspired Graham Yost to give the character his own TV series, whichtook the breakout star from the short-livedDeadwoodand launched him onto the A-list.
It’s rare that the actors in adaptations of Leonard’s work get the dialogue right, but Olyphant nailed it: the rhythm, the cadence, the smoothness.
It’s rare that the actors in adaptations of Leonard’s work get the dialogue right, but Olyphant nailed it: the rhythm, the cadence, the smoothness.Timothy Olyphanthas been in a bunch of great TV shows — and I’m sure he’ll be in many more — but he’ll forever be remembered as Raylan.
