Kevin Costner wasn’t the primary actor forged as Yellowstone lead John Dutton – informally, a minimum of. 

As detailed on this week’s Hollywood Reporter cowl story profile on Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan, Paramount’s neo-Western hit was initially in growth for years at HBO, however struggled to get off the bottom. Sheridan says then-programming president Michael Lombardo was supportive, however the remainder of his staff wasn’t.

“I believed Taylor was the true deal,” Lombardo says. “In a world of people that pose, he was writing what he knew, and he cared desperately in regards to the present. The concept of doing a modern-classic Western was an incredible thought — we have been all the time doing city exhibits, and this felt recent.”

The one factor all of them agreed on, nonetheless, was that Yellowstone wanted a giant star to play its protagonist patriarch John Dutton. Sheridan pitched Kevin Costner, who would finally take the function when the present was ordered by Paramount in 2017, however executives “didn’t see it.” 

“They mentioned, ‘We would like Robert Redford,’” Sheridan remembers. “They mentioned, ‘If you may get us Robert Redford, we’ll greenlight the pilot.’” 

Being a can-do sort of man, Sheridan went to go to Robert Redford. 

“I drive to Sundance and spend the day with him and he agrees to play John Dutton,” Sheridan says. “I name the senior vp accountable for manufacturing and say, ‘I received him!’ ‘You bought who?’ ‘Robert Redford.’ ‘What?!’ You mentioned if I received Robert Redford, you’d greenlight the present.”  

“And he says — and you’ll’t make this shit up — ‘we meant a Robert Redford sort.’” 

Sheridan then needed to make a fairly painful name to the enduring Oscar winner to clarify that the starring function he thought he had been empowered to supply him was slipping away. Lombardo additionally received on the cellphone with Redford to try to easy issues over, whereas HBO privately defined to Sheridan they weren’t positive in regards to the then-80-year-old actor because of “his superior age, and this and that.” 

So a disaster assembly was scheduled to try to resolve the community’s reluctance to maneuver ahead. Sheridan and his Yellowstone co-creator, John Linson, met with the senior vp (“whose title I keep in mind, however I’m simply not saying it”).

“We go to lunch in some snazzy place in West L.A.,” Sheridan says. “And John Linson lastly asks: ‘Why don’t you need to make it?’ And the vp goes: ‘Look, it simply feels so Center America. We’re HBO, we’re avant-garde, we’re trendsetters. This seems like a step backwards. And admittedly, I’ve received to be trustworthy with you, I don’t suppose anybody ought to be dwelling on the market [in rural Montana]. It ought to be a park or one thing.’” 

If that quote sounds vaguely acquainted, it’s as a result of Sheridan later put a few of it into Yellowstone season two, when a New York journal reporter disses Montana to Wes Bentley’s character Jaime … after which Jaime murders her. 

The manager’s candid diss was a fruits of Sheridan’s feeling that HBO simply didn’t respect his challenge. Throughout a notes name for the pilot, for instance, Sheridan says executives took concern with the character of Beth Dutton, who has since turn into a fan-favorite sensation performed by Kelly Reilly.

“‘We predict she’s too abrasive,’” Sheridan quotes. “‘We need to tone her down. Girls gained’t like her.’ They have been improper, as a result of Beth says the quiet half out loud each time. When somebody’s impolite to you in a restaurant, or cuts you off within the parking zone, Beth says the factor you want you’d mentioned.” 

Sheridan remembers, “So I mentioned to them, ‘OK, everyone finished? Who on this name is answerable for a scripted present that you just guys have on the air? Oh, you’re not? Thanks.’ And I hung up. They by no means referred to as again.”

That ought to have been the tip of the Dutton household. HBO usually retains the rights to scripts it develops and rejects, partly to stop what occurred subsequent with Yellowstone from taking place — a present they invested in and rejected changing into a worldwide smash for a competitor.

“When the regime modified, Lombardo referred to as me,” Sheridan says in regards to the longtime HBO exec’s exit in 2016. “To his credit score, he mentioned, ‘I all the time believed within the present, however I couldn’t get any help.’ His final act earlier than they fired him was to present me the script again.”

As for that anonymous vp, he left HBO and received his personal manufacturing deal. After Yellowstone took off, he emailed Sheridan to congratulate him — and to pitch a household drama that he was creating.  

Sheridan says he wrote again: “Nice thought. It sounds identical to Yellowstone.”

For extra about Sheridan, together with his breakdown of what precisely occurred with quitting star Kevin Costner and new particulars about the way forward for the Yellowstone franchise – learn THR’s full cowl story: Taylor Sheridan: “There Is No Compromising.”