Elmore Leonard Hated One Thing About Timothy Olyphant's Justified Character (At First)

"Justified" is one of the best crime dramas of all time, but Elmore Leonard wasn't a fan of every aspect of the FX adaptation. In fact, the author believed Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) should have looked very different from the version seen on screen. Leonard also had no problem letting Olyphant know how he felt about the changes.

"My character in the book had a very specific hat, and when I went to try hats on, I put it on and I didn't love it," Olyphant told Interview. "And I was like, 'I'm going with this other thing.' I went with something that was a little more of a western-y look. And he hated that I didn't have the hat that I was supposed to have."

Olyphant added that Leonard often visited the set of the acclaimed neo-Western series and jokingly suggested that Raylan should get rid of the hat altogether. However, the author eventually got used to the headgear.

It turns out that Elmore Leonard just needed some time to get used to Raylan's Stetson. The author was more than happy to rib Timothy Olyphant about it, but he eventually warmed to the cowboy's appearance.

"I'm like, 'This old f**ker. He really has no problem needling me about this thing.' But then years later, it grew on him," Olyphant told Interview. "He would sometimes come and do press with us, and then I got to go out and do press with him when he was promoting his book, because he wrote a Raylan book because the show got him going."

Despite not liking the hat at first, Leonard was open to other changes made to Raylan for the FX show. The character isn't as angry in the book, for example, but the author felt giving him a bad temper suited the TV version of the character. Overall, he loved the show, and his quibbles with the hat were minor in the grand scheme of things.