Wynonna Earp’s Tim Rozon Talks Season 2

Tonight, Syfy‘s cult-hit comic book adaptation Wynonna Earp returns for its second season, with a big, new mission statement ahead of it…and few characters have changed more since the pilot last year than Tim Rozon’s Doc Holliday.

(Yes, that Doc Holliday.)

A contemporary of Wyatt Earp, Doc found himself fighting side-by-side with Wynonna — Wyatt’s great-great-granddaughter — and her sister Waverly in season 1, after emerging from a well where a witch had cursed him to stay…and he had been stuck for over a century. A man of few pleasures in the first season, Doc was primarily interested in getting revenge on the Stone Witch…but along the way, his relationship with Wynonna deepened and entering season 2, his role with the Black Badge Division a bit more…formalized…than it was in the past.

ComicBook.com spoke with Rozon about the challenges of reinventing the role of the famed gunfighter for a new generation, his favorite screen takes on Doc Holliday before him, and what to expect in the show’s second season.

How does your journey differ from last year’s?

Last year, Doc Holliday had been in the well for 136 years, so I pretty much had one mission, which was revenge, which is why I kind of lived in that gray area and sometimes people called me good or bad. I will never call a character good or bad, because I think we’ve all got different motives and intentions, and good and bad is kind of in the eyes of the viewers. But let’s just say I lived that gray area a lot last year, more than other characters, and that’s because I had one motive, and that was revenge.

In season 1, I kind of got that revenge — or Wynonna got it for him, but I got the witch that put me in there. Nothing is ever that simple when it comes to Emily Andras and her shows, and I think I’ve got my own, different arc this year and a different journey to go on. And stuff from the past will come back again to kind of haunt Doc.

There’s so much good stuff. Without giving spoilers, it’s tough, but I’m on a different journey this year. There’s other things that are more important to Doc than revenge, which is kind of great because I got to kind of grow as a character a lot this year. It’s such a tricky character because he’s a man out of time. I’m the only one from the past, kind of stuck in the future, running around with everybody.

So much of the narrative around the show is about its inclusivity. How is it to be the only straight, white male in the middle of it?

It’s funny, I was actually having this conversation with someone yesterday. It’s great that the show is so much about representation, but it’s also about so much more.

For Doc, I’m lucky because he’s an iconic character. We’re talking about Doc Holliday; I’m not just playing a cowboy on a TV show, we’re talking about Doc freaking Holliday, of the OK Corral fame, of Wyatt Earp. So I think that sets me apart. I think it would be more difficult if I wasn’t such an iconic character to play.

Obviously there have been some great actors to play Doc in the past. When you got the part, are you the kind of actor who studied those performances to see what you could glean, or the kind of actor who wanted to distance yourself from them so you could go in relatively fresh?

You know, it’s so funny because 100%, I knew exactly who Doc Holliday was from Tombstone. Of course! That was right around my time growing up, and I don’t know anybody who didn’t like Val Kilmer in Tombstone. I also like Dennis Quaid in the Kevin Costner Wyatt Earp, and there were of course others, too. But I made sure to not go back to those movies. I had seen them and loved those, and I had always loved Doc Holliday, but I made sure not to.

I did my own research and the first thing I realized is that mustache that he had was a hell of a lot bigger than anybody else had in their portrayals yet on TV or film. I started growing that thing right away, and I also ordered a Colt Thunderer replica — a replica of his exact gun. I said, “If I’m going to be playing the deadliest gunfighter in history, I’d better get good with a frickin’ pistol.”

So I was just walking around my house, playing with this gun, trying to learn to spin it, and of course when I get out to start the show out west, they’ve got all these professional gun-handlers and cowboys to teach me how to fire, and they’re like “Yeah, you don’t do the spinning stuff. The spinning stuff is just movie garbage. Doc Holliday would not be spinning guns.” So I learned all this spinning stuff, and they were like “Yeah, don’t do that.”

I’ve actually got pretty good with the Thunderer — because of course now I use the real gun, which is a hell of a lot heavier than the one I’d been practicing with anyway.

How much training did it take you before you could really be confident showing off your skills?

We had to do so much training, so often.

The first time I ever met Dominique Provost-Chakley, who plays Waverly, she was carrying a sawed-off shotgun, standing right next to me at a gun range, blasting the hell out of a target.

They brought us in kind of early to do the gun training — especially Shamier [Anderson] as the [Black Badge Division] guy. He had a lot more weapons. I only wanted to practice with the Colt Thunderer. I did play with the shotgun from time to time, because I felt like that would be a gun from back in the day also, but really for me, I’ve only fired the pistol. We did as much training as we wanted, and they brought us there as much as we wanted.

It’s kind of cool because when you’re a movie crew or a TV crew, you kind of get to break some rules. We’re not firing bazookas or anything, but we get to go early when no one’s there, and we kind of have the range to oursevles with all these professional marksmen. Shamier loves that stuff. I feel like the second he got in, he was just firing sniper rifles and Glocks and assault rifles and loving life.

Obviously the biggest onscreen relationship you have is Wynonna, but is there somebody you’d like to do more with?

It’s Emily Andras who says this a lot — that she can really put any of us together and be happy with the result. You put me and Shamier together, and we found a lot of comedy last year. That was great; I don’t think anybody thought there would be that Lethal Weapon-y comedy together.

A lot of my favorite stuff to do was with Dominique. I loved the contrast of the Waverly/Doc characters. I felt like she really grounded him and they have this kind of respect and mistrust. We always had good stuff — he was a little rough on Waverly a couple of times, but it was always fun to do.

Also, working with Mike Eklund in season one was good stuff. You’re only as good as your villain, and Mikey gave so much that it was always a pleasure.

But at the end of the day, give me scenes with Melanie. She’s an incredible actress and you have to have your A game on when you’re working with Mel. It’s just different. Every day that we’ve worked together and I have a scene with Mel, I go back to being a theatre kid. As an actor, I started in theatre and I get that excitement of going out on stage because I know Mel is going to bring something that’s big. To read it on paper, it’s not going to be what you think. Melanie Scrofano definitely doesn’t play it safe, and I love living in that world of no safety net, so give me Mel.

But give me anybody. Kat Barrell is another one — we don’t have that many scenes together but whenever we do, she’s amazing. That’s why we’re all so tight; they’re all great to work with at the end of the day. And in season 2, we have some new characters that I love work with. And they have the right attitude, which is kind of most important. Emily just seems to hire people with the right, positive attitude who love what they do and excel at it, and the new people we have this year fit right into that.

A fan question that I have seen people ask in the first few episodes: If Waverly did all of this research, how doesn’t she just recognize Doc Holliday?

I had all of these questions, too. I think it’s just that even if I do look like him, then I must be pretending because there’s just absolutely no way someone can live 130 years. The rest of the kind of sci-fi world hadn’t been opened up to them much at that point, so for her to believe that I was actually Doc doesn’t make sense.

My main question was, how is Doc as a man out of time not more panicked by getting in an elevator, or getting in a car for the first time, and Emily had a pretty good answer: Don’t forget, he was a professional poker player, so Doc Holliday never lets you know what he’s thinking. So even if he was confused by something, he’s never going to let you know that. His greatest strength is never showing you his weakness.

That worked for me: Yeah, maybe inside he’s conflicted about getting on this elevator, but he’s never going to show you, the audience, the other characers, what exactly he’s going through.

Based on the IDW Comic, Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) follows Wyatt Earp’s great granddaughter as she battles demons and other creatures. With her unique abilities, and a posse of dysfunctional allies, she’s the only thing that can bring the paranormal to justice. After years away, Wynonna Earp has traveled back to her home town of Purgatory to reluctantly take on the role destined for Wyatt Earp’s heir: Demon protector. Her enemy: Revenants, the resurrected (and twisted) souls of the criminals Wyatt Earp once took down. Using only her wits and her wit, Wynonna, along with sister Waverely (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), associate Agent Dolls (Shamier Anderson) and Wyatt’s cursed-with-immortality-best-friend Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), must try to stop the Revenants from taking over the town – and escaping into the world.

The cast also features Katherine Barrell as Nicole Haught, a local cop and Waverly’s girlfriend, as well as newcomers Varun Saranga as Jeremy Chetri and Tamara Duarte as Rosita.

Wynonna Earp is produced in Calgary by SEVEN24 Films, and distributed by IDW Entertainment. Emily Andras (Lost Girl, Killjoys) developed the series for television and serves as Executive Producer and showrunner. SEVEN24’s Jordy Randall and Tom Cox, IDW’s Ted Adams and David Ozer, Banditos Yanquis’ Todd Berger, and Circle of Confusion’s Rick Jacobs also serve as Executive Producers.

Wynonna Earp Season 2 premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Syfy.