Timothy Olyphant as Captain Kirk.
You can kind of see it, right? The swagger, the steely gaze that made Olyphant such an electric presence on shows like Deadwood and Justified… It’s an easy alternate universe casting to imagine—and, as Olyphant revealed in a recent interview, it was almost in the cards in our universe, too.
This is per a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, recorded before the SAG-AFTRA strike. Horowitz’s interview sees Olyphant talk about his recent Justified revival City Primeval, plus a whole bunch of other parts of his long and delightful career—his collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, his stint in the Star Wars universe, and more. That included, as is natural for these kinds of chats, some classic what-might-have-beens—including Olyphant admitting that, yeah, for a minute there, he was in the running to play James T. Kirk for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek.
In Olyphant’s version, he was actually auditioning, at least at first, for the part of Bones McCoy, a role which eventually went to Karl Urban. But once Urban scored that role, Abrams told Olyphant, “I already got a guy for [McCoy], so I don’t need you for that. But I don’t have a Kirk.’” Olyphant is incredibly complimentary toward Abrams about his conduct throughout the process, saying he couldn’t have been nicer—including the moment when Abrams called him up to tell him that the film’s producers had found a “younger” man to fill the captain’s chair. “I believe it was one of those things,” Olyphant said, “Where it’s like they might have been prepared to hire me, but they wanted somebody younger, and [Abrams] was having a hard time finding somebody younger, And somewhere along the line, J.J. called and said, ‘I found a guy, younger, who’s really good.’”
Olyphant, who’s very funny throughout the interview, couldn’t be more effusive in his praise for that younger guy, either, saying, “I have since then met Chris Pine and I am a huge fan of him both on and off screen. I love that guy. He’s a good dude.”
Interestingly, Horowitz also asked Olyphant about rumors that he’d been in the running to play Iron Man for Jon Favreau (who eventually cast him in The Mandalorian). On that subject, the otherwise ebullient Olyphant got weirdly tight-lipped, describing Favreau only as “a wonderful guy,” and adding “I would have been happy to suit up for him.”
[via Variety]
