Timothy Olyphant often plays cool, smooth-talking characters, but he changed things up in his sole episode of “My Name is Earl.” The popular (though short-lived) 2005 sitcom introduced Olyphant as a side character named Billy. From his first scene, Billy is established as the sort of lowlife who’d happily peer pressure an eleven-year-old into gambling away his father’s car. He successfully wins a race against child Earl (Noah Crawford) and takes his father’s Mustang, destroying Earl’s relationship with his dad for the rest of his childhood.
The episode, “Dad’s Car,” catches up with Billy later in life. Nearly 20 years have passed and Billy hasn’t changed a bit; He’s sporting an atrocious bald cap and still bragging about the (not particularly high) number of women he’s slept with. This time, Earl (played as an adult by Jason Lee) wins the race and gets his dad’s car back. Billy consoles himself with the idea that he’s still got his “dignity,” only for it to be revealed that he’s super into feet. Put simply: This is not a particularly dignified role for the Emmy-nominated Olyphant. When looking at the actor’s early-career roles, however, it’s not exactly out of left field.
My Name is Earl isn’t Timothy Olyphant’s only bad guy role
Timothy Olyphant’s role in “Earl” as an irredeemable sleazeball isn’t that far from one of his earliest TV roles: the traitorous spy Scooby in the short-lived 1996 CBS drama “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” Long before he starred as the likable leading man in one of the best crime dramas ever made, “Justified,” he developed a pattern of playing characters audiences loved to hate.
“I was trying to get my hands on the best possible thing I could get without having to deal with anything I wasn’t prepared to deal with,” Olyphant told Sharp Magazine about his early career. “So it was always one step forward, two steps back. Take a breath. See if I can deal.” While Olyphant certainly picked some great roles throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s, he also famously passed on the lead role of Dominic Toretto in the “Fast & Furious” franchise.
Reflecting on having missed out on an opportunity that likely would’ve spared him any further need to play minor TV roles, Olyphant told Sharp, “I passed on enormous opportunities only to end up playing the supporting role in the next film. And then I’d think to myself, ‘What the f*** am I doing? Why did I do that?'” Still, Olyphant mused that his slow-and-steady rise in fame might’ve been the smarter path overall: “I’ve been able to work for a long time,” he said, “and I haven’t had to deal with any kind of fame issues.” Nowadays, Timothy Olyphant is best known for starring in some amazing shows.
