‘Yellowstone’ Executive Producer on Taylor Sheridan’s Cowboy Episode and What to Expect in the Finale
[This story contains spoilers from the penultimate episode of Yellowstone season 5b, “Give the World Away.”]
There’s only one more episode of Yellowstone as we know it remaining. The currently airing season 5B was announced to be the final season in the Paramount Network flagship series. But since then, a possible season six with fan-favorite stars Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser has been in talks, leaving the state of TV’s No. 1 series up in the air. But if one thing is for certain, next week is sure to define the legacy of the Yellowstone ranch at the heart of the show.
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The penultimate episode that aired on Sunday, “Give the World Away,” was written by co-creator Taylor Sheridan and directed by executive producer Michael Friedman. The episode was a showcase for Sheridan, who recurs on the series as Texas horse trainer Travis Wheatley. This week, Sheridan returned as Travis when he received a visit from Beth Dutton (Reilly) at his Texas ranch (which was filmed at Sheridan’s real-life Bosque Ranch). Beth wants to ensure that Travis is doing right by the Yellowstone, and the visit from the daughter of the late John Dutton (departed star Kevin Costner) brings Yellowstone viewers into Travis’ world where he hosts strip poker games that include his girlfriend, played by guest star Bella Hadid, shows off his horse-riding prowess and, in the end, delivers Beth and the Yellowstone the big, fat check the struggling ranch needed.
“It was wonderful to see Taylor have fun in a way that is such an incorporation of life imitating, art imitating life in terms of it being shot in a place that he has built,” executive producer Christina Voros, who directed the four earlier episodes of season 5B, tells The Hollywood Reporter of the visit to Bosque Ranch. Voros also adds that Hadid, who now lives in Texas, was the only person eyed for the role to play his onscreen girlfriend. “[Taylor is] known as this writer of these great American Western TV sagas, but he’s also a cowboy and a tremendous horseman, and spends as much time doing that part of his personality and his life as he does writing the stories about that.”
Below in a chat with THR, Voros talks more about Sheridan’s onscreen cowboy sendoff, reveals how they filmed those huge Yellowstone ranch scenes while avoiding any big spoilers leaking, and unpacks the Dutton family chess moves made this episode to tease how they will come together in the end: “It all makes sense looking backwards. But looking forward, you never would have seen it coming.”
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This is the first episode we are chatting about that you didn’t direct of season 5B. As executive producer — and script gatekeeper — how much were you on set when this episode was filmed?
I was there a lot, mostly because we were getting so close to the end and everyone wanted to be there as much as possible. Michael Friedman is a dear friend and a tremendous director; he’s been part of Taylor [Sheridan]’s close, creative family from the very beginning. He’s been involved in the show since the first season and has been a producer and post-production guru/storyteller through all of Taylor’s shows. He started directing this past year on [Sheridan shows] Landman and Lioness, and then did this episode of Yellowstone. It was such a wonderful homecoming to have him directing since he’s been part of the show’s DNA from the very beginning.
It was a little hectic [for me when filming], because we were cross-boarding. Because I had directed the first four episodes, I hadn’t had any time to get ahead of stuff that was coming because we didn’t really shoot things in order; Michael did this episode, and then we still had parts of episodes 509, 510 and 511 that we still had to shoot. So I was able to use this as a little bit of prep time but I wanted to be on set as much as possible, partially because it was such a wonderful, full-circle moment with Michael and also because it’s such a magnificent centerpiece of the season. The elements of [this episode] 513 are everything that draws people to Yellowstone. It’s big, it’s cinematic. It’s horses. It’s emotion. It’s all of the poetry that the show has become known for really beautifully showcased.
Speaking of full circle, going into this season when you detailed your top-secret filming process, you spoke about having to film large scenes with extras and shooting diversion scenes to keep the plot under wraps. This episode had those big scenes, hosted at the the Dutton family’s Yellowstone ranch. Was this the big episode you were referring to in that conversation?
This was one of the big examples. There are elements throughout the season, like in Jamie’s [Wes Bentley] world where there are press conferences where that also came into play. But yes, this was the biggest swing we took at asking: How do we bring in all the wonderful background performers that we really need to be able to tell these stories, and how do we do it in a way where no one is going home at night and accidentally let it slip about something they saw on set?
So Michael and his first AD on the episode, Kristina Massie, did a really remarkable job in terms of finding the ways to divert the attention of folks who were coming in for background, and it had more to do with strategy in how it was shot. They were very smart about what absolutely had to be done in front of hundreds of extras and what could be shot in such a way where, when it’s cut together, it would feel like all of those people were there, but in fact, at that moment, they were not. This is probably the shining example of the lengths that everyone went through, and Michael and Kristina making sure that the secrets to the story stayed locked.
At the end of this episode, both John Dutton (played by departed star Kevin Costner) and Colby Mayfield (played by Denim Richards) are paid a public tribute. The scene happened in front of a lot of people where presumably many extras heard those major spoilers about the show’s recently deceased. How did you film that scene?
That had to do with what the production sound sounds like in the show versus what it sounded like when it was being recorded, and not allowing the extras to hear everything that was being said. I believe there was also an alternate script that was used in some of the wider shots that was absent of information. Then in the closer coverage, they recorded the real track.
You told me about the code word that was used in the script to hide John Dutton’s death — you gave him a pseudonym and called the John Dutton death scene: “Crosby’s arrival.” What were your code words in the script for the deaths for both Colby and Dawn Olivieri’s Sarah Atwood?
For Colby’s, we called it “Colby’s arrival.” And for Sarah’s, it was “Sarah arrives.” We continued working with the term “arrival,” because it’s so innocuous that you could read it on a call sheet and no one would ever think that there was anything wrong.
I wonder if anyone else will be “arriving”… Moving on, did you film the scenes for Travis’ ranch at Taylor Sheridan’s real-life ranch?
In the show, Travis runs Bosque Ranch, which is Taylor’s ranch in Weatherford, Texas.
THR profiled Taylor Sheridan for a 2023 cover story, which detailed his real-life skills as a horseman. He owns Bosque Ranch, as well as the historic 6666 Ranch in the Texas panhandle. But for the casual viewer who may not know Sheridan’s life story, how did you react when you saw that he would be showing off this side of himself in Yellowstone? Even the vibe on set seemed to be one of excitement, particularly with the scenes involving Kelly Reilly (who plays Beth Dutton) and Bella Hadid (who was cast as the girlfriend to Travis). Were you on set for the Travis scenes?
I actually wasn’t there when they filmed those scenes. A couple of those scenes were the very last scenes [filmed] of the show. They were shot in August and I was already prepping on The Madison [the Yellowstone sequel series]. But as far as the role of Travis, it was wonderful to see Taylor — again, in a full-circle moment — have fun in a way that is such an incorporation of life imitating, art imitating life in terms of it being shot in a place that he has built. He’s known as this writer of these great American Western TV sagas, but he’s also a cowboy and a tremendous horseman, and spends as much time doing that part of his personality and his life as he does writing the stories about that. So it was kind of wonderful to see the collision of the fictional world he’s created with the actual world he’s created as himself and as a man and as a horseman. To see those two things braided together was really fun.
Sheridan likes to cast real cowboys in Yellowstone whenever he can. Was this episode — with all of the extras, especially for the Bosque Ranch scenes — an example where he was able to showcase that authentic casting?
It all comes back to his sort of obsessions with authenticity. You can’t teach an actor to get on a horse and do magnificent things on horseback. He’s a firm believer that there are more cowboys who can act than there are actors who can cowboy. So he’s given roles to so many people. You see it in the Four Sixes work [on Yellowstone]: Dusty Burson is a tremendous cowboy and a pretty decent actor; Kory Pounds is an incredible cowboy, and a pretty decent actor! He’s done this with my husband [Jason Owen], who has been a wrangler on the show for many years. Taylor gave him a part as a detective — he’s the sidekick to the main detective. So he is the detective in the opening of the season 5B premiere who shows Kayce (Luke Grimes) where John Dutton (Kevin Costner) has been shot.
One of the consistent things about Taylor is that he understands how fun it is to be a part of something like this. I think he’s looking for opportunities to bring on some of these cowboys because they are who they are, and you can’t get more authentic than that. But it’s also really fun to say, “Let’s give [Yellowstone actor] Cole Palfreyman, another one of the wranglers and horseman that Taylor has worked with for years, a part on [Sheridan’s Paramount+ series] Bass Reeves.” He does that a lot. I remember back in season four during COVID, there were a lot of crew members he gave parts to. My key grip for years, Craig Sullivan, was cast as a glass repair guy. He’s done it from the very beginning and I think in an episode like this, there’s even more reason to cast the people you know as horsemen as horsemen.
Bella Hadid, to the average viewer, might seem like a stunt casting, but she also is living in Texas (and dating champion horse rider Adan Banuelos ). Do you know if the role of Travis’ girlfriend was a written for her?
All I know is that when that part was cast it wasn’t like there were casting tapes. By the time I knew it was cast, we knew it was her. So I don’t know when that decision was made, but again, it goes back to sort of keeping it in this family. She was great, and also could not be a lovelier human being. You bring in someone who is a celebrity in their own right and sometimes you are just floored with how marvelously kind and down to earth they really are, and she was really that.
Viewers have been waiting to find out what’s been going on with Jamie (Wes Bentley)’s son, Jamie Jr., and the mother of his son, former political consultant Christina (Katherine Cunningham). He reconnects with them this episode. Can you fill in the blanks a bit — how involved is Jamie as a father?
That’s a hard question, because the story is the story and the scripts are the scripts. I think one of the things Taylor does, and has done from the beginning of the show, is that there are issues with characters and thoughts that come up and whether they are red herrings or whether they are part of a shorter storytelling element versus a longer one, it happens organically. Going from season to season, the writing comes through him and out onto the page. It’s not something that has been strategically plotted out on Excel spreadsheets from the beginning. So I think every season what the story is and what the threat is and what the drama is, is coming out of the characters themselves as he writes him. This season is not about Jamie as a father; this season is about Jamie as a son.
Once again, a woman in Jamie’s life motivates him to get back on that horse, and the last we see is Jamie being instructed by Christina on how to go make the political Hail Mary speech of his life. I didn’t think Jamie had any cards left to play. Going into the finale, how is this episode setting Jamie up in a way where we can’t count him out yet?
Jamie is usually the smartest guy in the room, and I think he has succeeded in staying afloat through all of these ups and downs, and potential near-finalities of his life as a politician, by the insight of, in many cases, the women around him. The people who have believed in him at times when he hasn’t believed in himself. But ultimately, he is a master spokesperson. He is a master at rhetoric. Once he knows what to run with, he’s very good at spinning that web, and he’s always been good at spinning that web. So I think what you see here is an example of finding that lifeline and spinning something very elaborate out of it that may give him the room to pull himself from a place that we didn’t think he had a lifeline from.
It seems like Kayce (Luke Grimes) and Beth (Kelly Reilly) have nearly figured out how to save the ranch. This episode ends with Kayce telling Beth and wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) that to save the ranch, they have to “give it away.” There was a scene in Yellowstone prequel 1883 where Tim McGraw’s character James Dutton (an elder on the Dutton family tree to Kevin Costner’s John Dutton) is told by a Native tribal leader about the Dutton family ranch, “We will come back in seven generations and take this from you.” This seems where Yellowstone could be headed in its finale: Giving the land back to the tribes. That sounds like a pretty happy ending for a show like Yellowstone, but can you talk about this potential full-circle set up?
This hasn’t historically been a show about happy endings (laughs), but also, Taylor has taken Yellowstone and he has turned it into an intergenerational story. There are complexities that exist by virtue of doing that that I think make the world of the Dutton story so much richer and more interesting. (Editor’s Note: See other Yellowstone prequel series 1923.) I think it’s hard to say how much to read into it because there are so many threads dangled between these worlds that one could follow the path of. So I think the context of Yellowstone, within the historical saga that Taylor has been creating, is sort of the centerpiece. But the storylines are extending from it in many different ways.
If they give the land back, Rip and Beth could go off into their next adventure. (Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser are in talks for a possible sixth season of Yellowstone.) I can’t believe we’re already talking about the final episode. Going into next week, well, what can you say?
You many have stumped me! I think what you are feeling about it all seeming to happen so fast and how we’re at the final episode is testament to how many different ways things could go. I also think it’s testament to how much there is to wait for in the finale. Crafting a final episode to a six-season arc is something really difficult to do, and I think what people have to look forward to, in some ways, is that as much ground is covered in the finale as it has been the moments leading up to it. It has that kind of weight and complexity that a story like this deserves to go out with.
Luke Grimes told me he was a “mess” when he read the final script, and that reading it helped him get back into character as Kayce after being away for so long between seasons 5A and 5B. Kelly Reilly also teased a finale scene that explains the whole series, and said it has nothing to do with her and Rip (Hauser). Now that we’re here, I want to re-ask you this same question: When you first read the finale, did you see it all coming? Were you surprised? How did it make you feel?
I was surprised and I didn’t see it coming. I may have said this in one of our earlier interviews, but I think the conclusion to any great story is both surprising and inevitable, but you don’t realize it was inevitable until you get there. It all makes sense looking backward. But looking forward, you never would have seen it coming. That’s the magic place in storytelling and I think Taylor has done that with the finale. When I read the script, it took my breath away. And I’m someone who has been living in this world since season one. I know the characters intimately, I know the creator well, I know the story better than any story in my life, and I was sort of kicking myself that I didn’t see it coming. But, I didn’t see it coming.
This has been a heroic season for Kayce — which makes me nervous going into the finale!
Let’s talk about Luke for a second. Because I think you are right: I think this season for him was magnificent. I think what Taylor wrote for him was magnificent, but I also think that Kayce has been the quiet hero in his father’s shadows from the very beginning. And there’s something that’s happened this season, that we talked about earlier, where in the absence of the patriarch everyone has to step up. And in the absence of Kevin [Costner], the rest of the cast really had a large stage to fill, and they did such a phenomenal job stepping in to fill that space, and Luke especially. So much was weighed on his shoulders this season ,and to be able to step into that and carry the story and the legacy in the way that he has, it’s been beautiful to watch. The burden from a performance standpoint that he has shouldered — he has done it so deftly and effortlessly — it’s a profound, profound performance from him this season and I love that people are in love with where his character has gone this season, because I am too.
Did this week’s events function as John Dutton’s funeral, or is that still to come?
You’re going to have to watch next week.
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Yellowstone releases its finale Sunday at 8 p.m. on Paramount Network, followed by a linear premiere on CBS at 10 p.m. Head here for how to stream Yellowstone and read THR‘s season 5B coverage including more on Sheridan’s cowboy episode.
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