Kim Dickens, who played madam Joannie Stubbs on Deadwood, spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the in-development script for the Deadwood movie.
Deadwood ’s creator, David Milch, has been working on the script since the sequel movie was confirmed by HBO in January, but until now zero details had slipped out. According to Dickens, Milch has been holding individual lunch meetings with members of Deadwood’s ensemble cast. When she met with the Deadwood writer, he read scenes from the upcoming movie.
“We sat at lunch and he read a few scenes to me between Stubbs, Tolliver and Jane,” Dickens said. “He read all the parts. It was amazing, it was funny, it was sad. It was all that it was.”
Deadwood follows the residents of a South Dakota gold rush town in the 1870s, tangling the lives of local innkeepers, lawmen and laborers with a number of famous historical figures that visited the mountain town, including “Wild” Bill Hickok, “Calamity” Jane, Wyatt Earp and George Hearst. It is the best show ever made, but ended a tad prematurely after its third season.
This bit of info from Dickens has some interesting angles for Deadwood fans. While a scene between Stubbs and Tolliver is an expected dynamic — Stubbs once wrangled women for Tolliver’s casino before starting her own brother — the addition of Jane is a new and potentially explosive scenario. When Deadwood ended Jane and Stubbs were at the very beginning of a romantic entanglement. It sounds like “Calamity” Jane, who often gets drunk and yells insult at people, will be stepping into the abusive and dangerous relationship between Stubbs and Tolliver.
With the Deadwood movie still in the writing stages, a lot can go wrong, particularly with reuniting the cast. But Dickens (and HBO) is optimistic everyone will return. “I just know that everybody would do whatever they could to be a part of it,” she told EW. “All of us. I feel confident in saying that on behalf of everybody because it was just an amazing experience for us and there’s hardly anything like it and it’s kind of the reason you want to be an actor, to do things like that.”
