‘I thought I liked being directed until I wasn’t’: Timothy Olyphant discusses work with Steven Soderbergh on ‘Full Circle’

When you’ve run the gamut of film and television the way Timothy Olyphant has, there’s a good to fair chance that you’ve become familiar with your preferred rhythm; indeed, from gunning for Sidney Prescott’s head in Scream 2 to shoring up Tarantino’s mythology in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood to rolling up as Cobb Vanth in various Star Wars shows, Olyphant’s versatility is no doubt the result of a solid foundation, right?

But at 55, the Santa Clarita Diet star is still learning what makes him tick on set, and he has none other than Steven Soderbergh to thank for that. Perhaps best known for Erin Brockovich and the Ocean’s trilogy, one of Soderbergh’s latest endeavors has been Full Circle, a noir miniseries that premiered on Max back in July, and the site of the filmmaker’s recent collaboration with Olyphant — a collaboration that wound up surprising the actor quite a bit.

In an interview with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, Olyphant opened up about the curious discovery he made thanks to Soderbergh’s directing style; namely the filmmaker’s subtle way of communicating with his actors while still remaining almost entirely hands-off.

“I thought I liked being directed until I wasn’t… then I’m like ‘I don’t want direction!’ I’m embarrassed how much I thought I needed someone to say, after the word ‘cut,’ to say something along the lines of ‘that was great,’ ‘wonderful,’ you know? You get used to that being the next thing. And on this, it would be ‘cut!’ And then it would be silence, and then he’d say ‘alright, let’s go again,’ and then you’d just do it again… And then he’d say ‘okay, next shot,’ and off we’d go. So ‘next shot’ means ‘wonderful.'”

Of course, when you get to work with actors of Olyphant’s caliber, even a filmmaking giant like Soderbergh would probably prefer to let them do their own thing. And for Full Circle in particular, the No Sudden Move director has Claire Danes, Dennis Quaid, Jim Gaffigan, and series star Zazie Beetz to lean on, so we imagine the notes were few and far between.

Full Circle is available to stream in its entirety on Max.