The story of making Yellowstone is getting renewed focus now that we know that Yellowstone Season 5 (Part 2) will also be the final season of the mega-hit show. Since it’s been announced that Yellowstone is ending, there’s been a mix of gains (a Yellowstone sequel series and multiple spinoffs) and losses (prequel series 1923 having Season 2 delayed indefinitely).
Videos by ComicBook.com
In a new interview, Yellowstone franchise creator Taylor Sheridan shares some backstory of the winding road to get to the Yellowstone we know and love today – including how HBO executives (with the exception of Michael Lombardo) didn’t support him, and wanted a very different actor than Kevin Costner to play patriarch John Dutton:
“They said, ‘We want Robert Redford,’ ” Sheridan recalls to THR. “They said, ‘If you can get us Robert Redford, we’ll greenlight the pilot.’”
Sheridan indeed went to see Robert Redford, but it didn’t work out: “I drive to Sundance and spend the day with him and he agrees to play John Dutton,” Sheridan recalls. “I call the senior vice president in charge of production and say, ‘I got him!’ ‘You got who?’ ‘Robert Redford.’ ‘What?!‘ ‘You said if I got Robert Redford, you’d greenlight the show.’ And he says — and you can’t make this sh*t up — ‘We meant a Robert Redford type.’ “
That awkward situation led to Sheridan and the executive (who he won’t name) having to sit down for a clarification session:
“We go to lunch in some snazzy place in West L.A.,” the showrunner/filmmaker recalls. “And [Yellowstone co-creator] John Linson finally asks: ‘Why don’t you want to make it?’ And the vp goes: ‘Look, it just feels so Middle America. We’re HBO, we’re avant-garde, we’re trendsetters. This feels like a step backward. And frankly, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone should be living out there [in rural Montana]. It should be a park or something.’”
HBO executives didn’t stop there: they also tore down Yellowstone’s breakout female character Beth Dutton (who was eventually played by actress Kelly Reilly):
“‘We think she’s too abrasive,’ ” Sheridan said, quoting the execs. “‘We want to tone her down. Women won’t like her.’ They were wrong because Beth says the quiet part out loud every time. When someone’s rude to you in a restaurant, or cuts you off in the parking lot, Beth says the thing you wish you’d said.”
Apparently, the exchanges affected Taylor Sheridan so much that he would later work out some catharsis through Yellowstone’s narrative. Season 2, for instance, featured a New Yorker reporter slamming Montana and its culture (the state where Yellowstone is set), only to be murdered by the Dutton’s adopted son, Jamie (Wes Bentley). As for Beth? Well, Kelly Reilly became a major TV icon for making Beth as ferocious as her male counterparts.
In the end, Yellowstone moved to Paramount, after Sheridan crossed a very important boundary: learning to do his shows, his way. He left HBO and moved to Paramount (“When the regime changed, Lombardo called me. To his credit, he said, ‘I always believed in the show, but I could not get any support.’ His last act before they fired him was to give me the script back.”) When Yellowstone became a breakout hit, that same executive that stood in Sheridan’s way tried to act supportive – even pitching him a new idea for a family drama series: “Great idea,” Sheridan wrote back. “It sounds just like Yellowstone.”
Yellowstone will air Season 5 Part 2 this fall; previous seasons are streaming on Peacock.
