‘Tulsa King’s Former Showrunner Terence Winter On Why He Returned To The Paramount+ Drama: “We All Got On The Same Page Creatively”

Lynette Rice
·7 min read

In February of 2023, Deadline broke the news that Terence Winter was stepping down as showrunner of Tulsa King, Taylor Sheridan’s latest joint for Paramount+ that stars Sylvester Stallone as a fresh-out-of-prison mafia capo named Dwight “The General” Manfredi who establishes a new criminal empire in Oklahoma.

So it was more than a little surprising to hear that exactly one year later, Winter was returning to the show to serve as a writer/executive producer. (Like Sheridan’s other series produced by 101 Studios, Tulsa King kicked off production on season 2 without a traditional showrunner, with director/EP Craig Zisk taking on the on-set leadership role).

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Ahead of the season 2 premiere on September 15, Winter explains what to expect in the coming episodes, and why he decided to return to the Tulsa crime world that he helped to build with Sheridan and Stallone.

DEADLINE Why did you return to the show?

TERENCE WINTER Because I love it. I love working with Sly. I love the cast, the crew, and we got to the point where we solved whatever creative … we all got on the same page creatively, I think. And the fact that I got the opportunity to continue, I was absolutely not going to pass that up. It’s so much fun to do. And yeah, working with Sly and this group of actors has been one of the highlights, so I was so thrilled we were able to work that out.

DEADLINE This kind of thing doesn’t happen that much.

WINTER No one was happier than me, believe me.

DEADLINE How has your role on the series really changed?

WINTER It’s changed in the sense that I’m much more focused on the writing than being on set and producing. We brought on a wonderful producing director this year, Craig Zisk. So that took a lot of those duties away from me, and it was really more about working directly with Sly and the writers. So in that sense, it changed. I did go out to Atlanta a couple of times where we were shooting this year and was involved with casting and that sort of stuff, but for the most part I kind of stayed put and just focused on the writing, which is really what I want to do.

DEADLINE Speaking of Atlanta, why did production move there from Oklahoma?

WINTER That was a production consideration, which I took myself out of. I’m assuming it was because of better, easier infrastructure. Oklahoma was wonderful, but I think there’s just a lot more production in Atlanta, and it’s easier to get crews. I’m assuming at the end of the day it just made more sense from a business standpoint. We do still go to Oklahoma for exteriors. People will not see a significant difference from season one to season two.

DEADLINE We wrote about how Stallone was accused of disparaging extras on set, which prompted an Atlanta casting company to leave the show. Can you explain what happened? Were you around?

WINTER No, I was in L.A. and read about it like everybody else. I was not on set at all. Again, I want to just focus on the writing and I am lucky enough to be able to that from my home.

DEADLINE So in the season 2 premiere, will you pick up moments after Dwight was arrested?

WINTER Yes. We start right out of the gate, literally moments later when he’s being processed and put into a holding cell. That’s kind of what was fun about the writing. The table was already set in an interesting way. Tthis guy just got arrested. What do they do with him? Well, they take all the stuff out of his pockets and put him in a jail cell. Who might he need in there? What happens, then? You just take it from there.

DEADLINE It sounds like he may be in the pokey for a while.

WINTER He could be.

DEADLINE Why did Stacy, played by Andrea Savage, do that to him, get him arrested in the finale?

WINTER I think she felt she was pressured by her bosses to either maybe get arrested and lose her job or play the game, and they were obviously looking to put this guy away. She was kind of between a rock and her hard place. So she did what she felt she had to do. She’s a very complicated woman.

DEADLINE Is Dwight’s daughter Tina (Tatiana Zappardino) in danger this season?

WINTER I think being the daughter of a mob boss is always a little fraught with danger — especially being the daughter of a mob boss who is at odds with another psychotic mob boss. I’d say you’re always in a little bit of danger, sure.

DEADLINE Viewers expected you to keep bad Caolan Waltrip around for a while. Did you enjoy defying expectations?

WINTER Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you can go up against a guy like Dwight and expect a good outcome when you’re butting heads in that way. That was the logical conclusion of that storyline. I think anything short of him ending without his brains on the wall somewhere would’ve been a false note. It sort of felt like this is where it needed to go, and I think as an audience member myself, probably where I would wanted it to go.

DEADLINE Can you talk about the new antagonists?

WINTER One is played by Frank Grillo, who’s a rival mob boss from Kansas City. He gets wind of the fact that there is what he considers an interloper nearby in Tulsa. Of course, he’s not happy about that. He thinks he’s owed something. The other one is a character played by Neil McDonough, who is a rival in the medical marijuana business and maybe something of a romantic rival as well with Margaret, the character played by Dana Delany.

DEADLINE Who’s idea was it to hire Frank Grillo?

WINTER I think Sly, actually. When we first started talking about that character, I think Frank was probably one of the first people he mentioned, and pretty much everybody was on board immediately. He came in and was a perfect fit. As I’ve said before, when you casting somebody to go up against Stallone as an antagonist, you need somebody with gravitas that’s not going to shrink. Sly is very intimidating, and you need somebody that can look him in the eye and feel like they could stand their own with him, whether or not they can. These villains are a real threat. Both Neil and Frank bring with them that weight and gravitas you need to make it feel scary and real.

DEADLINE What about affairs of the heart when it comes to Dwight? Can you tease anything there?

WINTER We certainly get much more of a window into his relationship with Margaret, as well as what he wants emotionally in his relationship with his daughter. This is a guy who got out of jail after 25 years who’s now, maybe, has 15 good years left when he can make something of his life and repair the damage of the past. So the emotional components of his life are as important to him as the business stuff. And obviously he wants the respect he feels he deserves as a mob boss, but it’s also more about repairing that broken family and finding peace and comfort and love, which is what even a mob boss needs and wants. If you’re a guy of a certain age and you’ve felt like you’ve screwed up your whole life and you’ve only got a limited amount of time and resources to repair that, what do you do? The clock is ticking and you’ve screwed up and you’re desperately trying to build something in a place where you’ve never been before. You’re a total fish out of water and your skills are very limited. Your conflict resolution skills are even more limited than that. So it’s a fun challenge to figure out how this guy is going to get through the day.

DEADLINE The last time we chatted, you talked about how much fun it was to be on set with Stallone and talk about his life’s work, especially his Rocky days. Do you miss that?

WINTER We still Zoom all the time. He doesn’t have a conversation that is not on Zoom or FaceTime. I don’t know what he has against actual traditional phone calls, but you literally will see FaceTime and it’s him because he’s the only person who does it. It’s hard. I’ll be driving and I look down at the phone and it’s him. He just likes to look you in the eye when he is talking to you, which is great. But it is funny. Most people just talk on the phone. And it’s happened to me in public. To me, it’s just Sly. But others are like, ‘oh, that’s Rocky in a drug store next to me.’ Then again, this is L.A. where you would expect to hear a call like that.

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