49 Fun Facts About Deadwood

On which network did Deadwood originally air from 2004 to 2006?

HBO ended Deadwood after three seasons in 2006, then brought most of the cast back 13 years later for Deadwood: The Movie.

Who created and largely wrote Deadwood?

David Milch read real 1870s Deadwood residents' diaries and used them as reference for the show's characters and events.

In which present-day US state is Deadwood set?

South Dakota: in 1876 the gold camp sat on Lakota treaty land, so it had no lawful government, and its leaders scheme to be annexed.

Who plays Al Swearengen?

Ian McShane's Swearengen starts out as a cutthroat villain, yet he ends up allied with Bullock to defend the camp against outsiders such as Hearst.

Who plays Seth Bullock?

Timothy Olyphant's Bullock gives up a Montana marshal's badge for a new life in the gold camp, yet by the season-one finale he is Deadwood's sheriff.

What is the name of Al Swearengen's establishment?

The Gem was real: Al Swearengen's Gem Theater advertised stage and waitressing jobs to young women, then forced those who came into prostitution.

Which ancient civilisation did Deadwood's creator first want to set his drama in?

Rome was already taken: the network had its own series Rome in development, so the creator moved his themes to the Old West, with gold replacing the cross.

Deadwood's creator had already tested broadcast TV's limits with which police drama?

NYPD Blue, co-created by the same writer, was so raw for broadcast TV that at least 30 ABC stations refused to air its 1993 premiere.

Deadwood's first season opens soon after which famous battle?

Little Bighorn: the season ends with General Crook's cavalry, out for reprisals over Custer's defeat, riding through the camp.

What business does Bullock come to Deadwood to establish?

A hardware store: Bullock gets the lot from Al Swearengen himself, then leaves camp to hunt down Hickok's killer.

Who plays Sol Star, Bullock's business partner?

John Hawkes' Sol Star, from Vienna, never rises to Swearengen's constant anti-Jewish taunts, and later works to open the camp's first bank with Alma.

Who plays Wild Bill Hickok?

Keith Carradine's Hickok cares more for poker than prospecting, and it costs him: he is shot dead at the card table only four episodes in.

Where is Wild Bill Hickok murdered?

Tom Nuttall's place, the No. 10 Saloon: after cleaning out a drunk at poker there, Hickok tosses him a dollar for breakfast, and the humiliated man returns to shoot him.

Who shoots Hickok in the back of the head?

Jack McCall is acquitted by a hurried camp jury after Swearengen leans on the judge, but Bullock tracks him down and hauls him to Yankton to face a real trial.

Which actor plays both Hickok's killer and, in season two, Francis Wolcott?

He returned again as a background drunk in the 2019 movie, heckling Hearst.

Who plays Alma Garret?

Molly Parker's Alma is widowed when Swearengen has her husband killed over a claim the man thinks is worthless, and it proves to be rich.

What secret habit does Alma Garret nurse when she arrives?

Laudanum: Swearengen orders one of his prostitutes to keep Alma doped, but she helps Alma fake it and quit, then tries to kill herself with opium.

How does Dan Dority kill Brom Garret on Al's orders?

Throws him off a cliff: Swearengen wanted it to look like an accident, but a prospector sees it happen and keeps quiet to save his own skin.

Who plays the hard-drinking frontierswoman who idolises Hickok?

Robin Weigert's frontierswoman talks tough, yet when Swearengen comes for the Metz girl in her care, she breaks down in terror.

Who plays Doc Cochran?

Brad Dourif's Doc Cochran, a Civil War veteran, prays in anguish for the dying Reverend Smith's release, haunted by the screams he heard on battlefields.

Which disease spreads through the camp in season one, forcing plague tents?

Smallpox: one early victim, a con man dumped in the woods to die by his old partner, is nursed back by a frontierswoman and returns in season two as a preacher.

Who runs the Bella Union, Al's rival establishment?

Cy Tolliver: the actor who played him died in 2017, so the 2019 movie has Tolliver dead and Joanie Stubbs running the Bella Union.

Who plays Deadwood's E. B. Farnum, the hotel owner and self-appointed mayor?

William Sanderson's Farnum, Swearengen's informant, sells his Grand Central Hotel to Hearst for $100,000 and a job managing it.

How does Al Swearengen end the suffering of the dying Reverend Smith?

Smothers him: by the season-one finale the reverend's brain tumour has left him bedridden, and Al ends his misery himself.

Who kills Magistrate Clagett on Swearengen's behalf and then becomes his agent?

Silas Adams, the magistrate's own bagman, cuts Clagett's throat after Clagett squeezes Al over a murder warrant, then becomes Al's man in Yankton.

What stops Al from cutting the sheriff's throat after the two fall off a balcony into the street?

The arrival of Martha and William: Swearengen, knife drawn, looks up at the stagecoach, catches the boy's terrified face, and lowers the blade.

What ailment leaves Swearengen collapsed behind a locked door in season two?

Kidney stones: his men leave the door shut for hours until Doc Cochran and Jewel get Dan to break it down, and Al pulls through but has a small stroke.

Whom does Alma marry to avoid the shame of being pregnant by Bullock?

Whitney Ellsworth, a veteran prospector, weds Alma in a hotel ceremony, but Hearst later has him shot dead in his tent on her claim.

Deadwood actor Jim Beaver named his character after a producer of which TV show?

Adventures of Superman: Beaver was researching a biography of its star George Reeves, so he asked that his prospector share its producer's name.

What is the name of the brothel Joanie Stubbs opens in season two?

The Chez Amis: Joanie's high-class brothel is ruined when a client murders three women there, and she later turns it into a schoolhouse.

In Deadwood, who is Francis Wolcott?

A geologist: sent ahead by George Hearst to buy up claims, he murders three women, is fired when Hearst arrives, and hangs himself.

Miss Isringhausen, Sofia's tutor, turns out to be an agent of whom?

The Pinkertons: Brom Garret's family hired the agency to frame Alma for his murder, but Swearengen, who despises Pinkertons, double-crosses her.

How does young William Bullock die in season two?

Trampled by a horse: a stallion bolts while the livery men try to geld it, and it charges into the street during the camp's first bicycle ride.

Who plays mining magnate George Hearst?

Gerald McRaney's Hearst is so bent on controlling the camp's gold that he has his own Cornish miners killed when they talk of forming a union.

Which Yankton commissioner arrives in Deadwood in season two to negotiate the camp's annexation?

Hugo Jarry: prospectors who fear his rules will void their claims mob him, and Bullock has to rescue him.

What does George Hearst do to Al Swearengen while Captain Turner holds him down?

Chop off a finger: Hearst does it himself, a lesson meant to force Al into helping him buy Alma's claim.

Who plays theatre impresario Jack Langrishe, Al's old friend?

Brian Cox's Langrishe buys the camp's schoolhouse for his theatre, and Joanie sells only after he agrees to build the children a new school.

Who runs against Bullock for sheriff in Deadwood's season-three election?

Harry Manning, a barman who mostly wants to lead a fire brigade, gets a landslide in the Sturgis returns after Hearst brings in soldiers to vote.

How does Bullock humiliate Hearst after another miner is killed?

Drags him by the ear to jail: Hearst spends the night in a cell, and Al warns Bullock that the humiliated magnate will now come after them.

In Deadwood, who shoots George Hearst in revenge for a prospector's murder?

Trixie hits Hearst in the shoulder but fails to kill him, and he then demands that the woman who shot him be executed.

Whose corpse does Al pass off as Hearst's would-be assassin in Deadwood's series finale?

The prostitute Jen's: Johnny Burns, who is fond of her, cannot bring himself to kill her, so Al does it himself.

Why did the show's format make a short six-episode fourth run unworkable?

Two two-hour films were proposed instead, and the movie took until 2019.

Which famous lawman arrives in Deadwood in season three to work a timber lease?

Wyatt Earp rides in with his brother Morgan, credited with saving the stagecoach from road agents, and moves on once their lease proves worthless.

Which gold-rush region does the history Deadwood: The Golden Years chronicle?

The Black Hills: the book was the first research purchase by Deadwood's creator, and his team went on to buy lots more of its author's books.

In Deadwood, whose pigs dispose of the bodies of Al Swearengen's murder victims?

Mr. Wu's: Al's men haul corpses to his pig pen, and even Jimmy Irons, who helped rob Wu's opium courier, ends up fed to the pigs.

Whose land does Hearst want to buy in Deadwood: The Movie, for his telephone lines?

Charlie Utter's: when he refuses to sell, Hearst has him murdered, and Alma then outbids Hearst for the land at auction.

Who marries Al's favourite girl in Deadwood: The Movie, with Al giving the bride away?

Sol Star weds her soon after their son is born, and Al, ailing, tells them he will leave her his saloon.

Who kills Hearst's informant before he can shoot Bullock in the back in Deadwood: The Movie?

Calamity Jane, so often frozen by violence in the series, overcomes her fear and shoots him dead.

Which Deadwood regular missed Deadwood: The Movie over a scheduling clash with another series?

Titus Welliver was busy filming Amazon's Bosch, so his character was the one surviving main character left out of the film.