Adelaide Clemens Finally Gets To Play A 'Fun' Villain In Revival Series Justified: City Primeval
Having been off the air for about eight years now, the neo-noir world of "Justified" is coming back to television with "Justified: City Primeval," a miniseries based on Elmore Leonard's 1980 novel. The Emmy Award-winning original series, which ran for over six seasons, starred Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, and featured a supporting cast including Joelle Carter, Nick Searcy, Jacob Pitts, Erica Tazel, and Walton Goggins.
"City Primeval" takes place many years after the 2015 series finale, with Raylan having left his life in Kentucky for Miami, where he's committed to raising his teenage daughter, Willa (now played by Vivian Olyphant), while trying to juggle his Marshal duties. But an incident on a Florida highway prompts a trip to Detroit, where he faces a new challenge in the deadly Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook), also known as "The Oklahoma Wildman." Although Holbrook appears to be propped up as the central antagonist, "City Primeval" features another challenge for Raylan in the form of Sandy, played by "Tommy" star Adelaide Clemens.
Focusing on season-long mainstays in addition to more episodic lawbreakers, "Justified" has proved to be as invested in its antagonists as it is in its morally complex heroes, with Goggins' Boyd Crowder being the greatest example. If "City Primeval" follows in the footsteps of the original FX series, Sandy will be just as important to the story as Raylan. Little is known about her character at the moment, but Clemens assures that her journey to becoming this character was a blast.
'She moves like a million miles an hour'
During a TCA (Television Critics Association) panel for "City Primeval," which /Film's Vanessa Armstrong attended, Clemens got to speak about getting to play the new "Justified" baddie. With a lot of Clemens' roles taking on more of a subtle nature (she joked about having a reputation as someone who plays religious extremists), she found playing the morally loose Sandy to be enjoyable:
"She's fun. She moves like a million miles an hour. Initially, when I read — because Tim sent me the script, and I was like, 'I really don't see myself in this character.' Over time, it dawned on me that there are few similarities in terms of her energy. [laughs] She's ambivalent a lot of the time, so balancing the two, I think she has her own moral code and that's really fun to play in. And once you sort of construct that, you can feel a lot better about the story you're telling. But it was an absolute joy. The writing was so incredible."
Clemens joins series newcomers Aunjanue Ellis, Vondie Curtis Hall, Marin Ireland, Norbert Leo Butz, and Victor Williams. Although she's appeared in projects like Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby," most of her credits stem from the world of television with shows like "Rectify," in addition to last year's "Under the Banner of Heaven." While this may be Clemens' introduction to "Justified," this won't be her first venture with Olyphant, as she worked with the "Santa Clarita Diet" actor on Kenneth Lonergan's Off-Broadway show "Hold On to Me Darling" back in 2016. There's no trailer, nor an official release date for the series premiere of "City Primeval," but all indicators point to a release in mid-2023.
"Justified" is currently streaming on Hulu.