Reviving canceled shows may be all the rage these days, but it’s rare that one returns a whopping 13 years later. After being abruptly canceled in 2006 after three seasons, HBO’s acclaimed Western, Deadwood, finally returns on Friday, May 31, for…
Reviving canceled shows may be all the rage these days, but it’s rare that one returns a whopping 13 years later. After being abruptly canceled in 2006 after three seasons, HBO’s acclaimed Western, Deadwood, finally returns on Friday, May 31, for its highly anticipated wrap-up movie. But this long after the fact, did the Deadwood movie cast manage to reunite all of the show’s main actors? It’s impossible to imagine the streets of Deadwood, South Dakota, populated by anyone other than the original ensemble. But it’s been over a decade since the Season 3 finale, and wrangling that sprawling cast back together again — many of whom have gone on to illustrious careers and are probably very busy — likely proved one of the main challenges in shepherding this project to the screen, and why it took so long to come to fruition.
Fortunately, HBO and Deadwood creator David Milch waited until they could lasso as many of the original cast members as possible before shooting Deadwood: The Movie. More than a dozen of the show’s starring cast members will be returning to their roles, with a couple notable omissions. Powers Boothe (24, Agents Of S. H. I. E. L. D.), who played Bella Union owner Cy Tolliver, passed away from cancer in 2017. (Fittingly, he was put to rest in a cemetery in Deadwood — although it’s Deadwood, Texas, not Deadwood, South Dakota.) And Titus Welliver (Lost, Agents Of S. H. I. E. L. D.), who played Al Swearengen’s henchman Silas Adams, could not return for the movie due to production on his Amazon series, Bosch.
But barring those two exceptions, who will undoubtedly be missed, pretty much every denizen of Deadwood is back for the movie. If you haven’t watched the series since its original run back in the early aughts, you might even be surprised by how many now-famous faces are in the cast. Here’s who’s returning — and what they’ve been up to since the series went off the air in 2006.
McShane, who earned an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of the swaggering, swearing Al Swearengen, is back as the infamous owner of the Gem Saloon. You may have seen him on the big screen as Blackbear in the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides, in this year’s Hellboy reboot, or in all three of the John Wick films.
After Deadwood was canceled, McShane went on to star in the acclaimed but short-lived NBC drama Kings alongside a young Sebastian Stan. He also guest-starred on American Horror Story: Asylum as a murderous Santa Claus, appeared on one episode of Game Of Thrones as the Hound’s rescuer/mentor Brother Ray, and currently leads Starz’s adaptation of American Gods as the Norse god Odin, aka Mr. Wednesday.
Olyphant went from playing Sheriff Seth Bullock to playing U.
