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A few days ago, on the set of Predators, I got to speak with Walton Goggins along with a number of other online journalists.  While we are embargoed  to write anything Predators related, we were given permission to cover things unrelated to the movie.  So if you're a fan of The Shield and curious what Goggins thought of the finale, his thoughts are after the jump.

Also, Goggins revealed to us that he's developing a show at AMC called Rectified and it's "about a guy who spends 21 years on death row, oddly enough. And it's about the day that he gets out of jail based on DNA evidence and he's this monk-like character who's lived in isolation for 21 years. And it's the way that he sees the 21st century that we live in today. I'm going to play the lead, so that's hopefully going in March."

More after the jump:

When we asked Goggins what he had coming up, he responded with:

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Goggins: I've got a couple movies I'm going to do after the first of the year. And it's been a big decision for me to go back into television. Based on that seven year experience on The Shield and looking for the right material. I'm doing something for FX called Justified, a new series with Tim Olyphant, as a favor. I'm a big fan of Tim's and a longtime friend and the network, FX, is my home. My partner and I, we have a production company and we have a show at AMC called Rectified, which is about a guy who spends 21 years on death row, oddly enough. And it's about the day that he gets out of jail based on DNA evidence and he's this monk-like character who's lived in isolation for 21 years. And it's the way that he sees the 21st century that we live in today. And I'm going to play the lead, so that's hopefully going in March. We'll see.

Have you already shot the pilot?

Goggins: We haven't shot the pilot yet. We hope to shoot the pilot sometime this Spring.

AMC, huh?

Goggins: Yeah, AMC. I feel like I'm cheating on my wife. FX is my seven year relationship, but AMC and the material that they're putting out there is on par with FX and as good a product as being made on television.

Do you miss Shane at all?

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Goggins: I really miss him, man. It was very hard, I think, for all of the cast-members in their own particular way, to let these characters go. For me, Shane was someone that, I spent so much energy trying to get people to like him because people didn't for the longest time. They loved to hate him and they laughed at him because he was really funny kind of early on in the series. But I knew as the show progressed that if, based on what Shawn had written, that I could get people's heart, you know, and I could make them kind of care for him and eventually see the world from his point-of-view. He was corrupted morally by Vic Mackey. So it's been hard to let him go. I still have his leather jacket. And I have his boots. I'm the guy who dresses up as Shane on Halloween. (Laughs)

When you look back on The Shield and talk to people who loved that show so much, they talk less about Mackey's final scene and about the family meeting. Can you talk about filming that episode and the way Shane went out?

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Goggins: I was, I did this movie for Spike Lee called Miracle at St. Anna and it coincided with the last two episodes of The Shield. Shawn gave me the script as I was getting on a plane and he said, "You're going to read this and you're going to read it alone." No, they actually sent it to the hotel in Italy. They said, "You're going to read it alone and if you have a problem, call me, even if it's at 3 o'clock in the morning, just call me." And I read it and I started crying. My first response was I just threw it across the room and I said, "Fuck this," you know? "I'm not going to fucking do this." Because, for me, how could you ever come back from killing your family? How could you ever be redeemed in the audience's eyes? And I cared about this character so much. And it was only the second time that I read it through that I realized the opportunity that Shawn had given me, in spite of this act, that if I was able to execute what Shawn and the other writers on the show wrote, then I could carry this group that's been following us for seven years on a great journey and feel for him and sympathize with him in a way that you haven't been given an opportunity to sympathize with characters on television. So it was just, it broke my heart. It was the hardest thing that I've ever had to let go in my career so far. And my career really started in earnest with a movie called The Apostle with Robert Duvall and that changed my life. So I've had a good, I've had a really nice run.