Fan-Favorite Yellowstone Star Nearly Quit Acting Before Joining Series

With Yellowstone in its fifth season on Paramount Network, the series has not only grown in popularity but so has the series' characters and the actors bringing them to life. Among those fan-favorite actors is Mo Brings Plenty who plays Mo, right hand man and fixer for Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) in the series. But while Brings Plenty and his character have grown in popularity as Yellowstone continues, it turns out that the actor nearly quit the profession before joining the series.

Speaking with the New York Times, Brings Plenty said that he became interested in acting initially because there wasn't enough Native American representation on television.

"So, I thought, 'How do I change that?' Because I wasn't on TV either," he said. "The misrepresentation of us has been occurring for so long."

He went on to explain that he started working in theater and then stunt riding before landing supporting roles in both television and film but was ready to just go back to his Kansas ranch a few years ago after he wasn't satisfied with the representation he was seeing on screen. It was then that the opportunity for Yellowstone came along.

When Brings Plenty first came on the show, his character hadn't yet been given a name and was just Rainwater's driver, but it turns out that Birmingham — a real-life friend of Brings Plenty — had a hand in the character ending up sharing the actor's name. Birmingham's Rainwater simply referred to Brings Plenty as Mo (short for Moses) in a scene and it stuck.

"So, Taylor decided that he was going to use that name for the character as well," Birmingham said. "When Mo is out and about, it's pretty funny because people tend to call you by your character name, and it happens to be his real name. There's no distinction for fans."

And fans are getting more of Brings Plenty than ever. The actor has become a series regular on Yellowstone.

"There is a real honesty to Mo's acting — a comfortable vulnerability," Sheridan said. "One of the great things about long-form storytelling is that it allows me to react to actors who really shine. Mo began as a co-star on the show, and now he is a series regular. That is how much his portrayal leapt from the screen."

Yellowstone airs Sundays on Paramount Network.