The Oscar nominee keeps turning the Western on its head with his new Kevin Costner-led series
It’s cowboys and Indians all over again. Yellowstone, the flagship show of the Paramount Network (a rebrand of Spike TV), inevitably brings to mind that somewhat outdated phrase, but this time it’s the cowboys who are desperately trying to protect their land, all 900,000 acres of it, from Native Americans who believe they now have manifest destiny on their side. And rather than engaging in outright warfare, the tribe’s plan involves political intrigue, media spin and casino cash.
Premiering June 20, Yellowstone turns the Western upside down and inside out. It follows a fictional ranching family in present-day Montana who will stop at nothing to maintain control of their holdings as they clash with a neighboring reservation—as well as rapacious developers and meddling government officials.
Although modernized and revisionist, Yellowstone also draws on many themes of the classic Western: families divided by politics and principles; chaos and uncertainty as one era of history ends and another begins; and a constant struggle over the last remaining frontiers. Which is why it must have come from the one guy in Hollywood who seems to understand how relevant those themes make the Western right now.
Series creator Taylor Sheridan—who wrote and directed all 10 episodes of Yellowstone’s first season—has been circling the genre for the past few years, beginning in 2015 with his screenplay for the border drug-war thriller Sicario. (He also wrote the sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, out June 29.) He dove deeper into Western themes with his Oscar-nominated script for 2016’s Hell or High Water, as well as with 2017’s Wind River, a murder mystery set on a Wyoming reservation, which he wrote and directed. But with this show, he fully embraces the uniquely American tradition, even as he subverts it.
“If you’re doing something dumb, [Kevin Costner] will tell you it’s dumb. And he’ll probably be right.”
“I think Yellowstone, albeit modern-day, is probably the truest Western of them,” says Sheridan. “I was a huge fan of Westerns as a kid—I still am. In my head, I was saying, If John Ford came back to life today and wanted to do a series, how would he film it? I looked at The Searchers. I watched a number of his films. Fort Apache was extremely influential on the visual style of Yellowstone.”
Indeed, the series is packed with many of the visual and thematic touches that have become hallmarks of Sheridan’s work, with claustrophobic physical and emotional standoffs between characters set against vast, sweeping landscapes. (“I try to really build on the fact that you can be backed into a corner on a 900,000-acre ranch,” he says.) But it adds a new element: the classic Western patriarch. As played by Kevin Costner, John Dutton is the kind of antihero whose ruthless drive to dominate everything in sight somehow doesn’t contradict his genuine heartbreak over being denied the chance to spend time with his only grandson.
“We had a ranch, and we lost that ranch. Elements of that influenced my life and writing.”
“Take the characters in any of them, whether it’s Sicario or Hell or High Water or Wind River. You’re taking ordinary people and placing them in extraordinary circumstances,” Sheridan says. “But if you think about the kind of person it takes to run, own and maintain an operation that massive, it has to be someone who has a politician’s sense of swagger or charm or presence.”
Costner brings all three to Yellowstone. “There’s no one else who could do this role,” Sheridan says. “He’s been doing this for, you know, 40 years. If you’re doing something dumb, he will tell you it’s dumb. And he’ll probably be right.”
For the 48-year-old Sheridan, who broke into Hollywood as an actor on shows including Veronica Mars and Sons of Anarchy, the relevance of the modern-day Western hits close to home. “You write what you know, to a certain degree,” he says. “I grew up in Texas. We had a ranch, and we lost that ranch. Elements of that influenced my life and writing.”
Even though he paints its characters in shades of gray rather than stark black and white, Sheridan is up-front about the fact that his sympathies don’t lie with the ranchers on Yellowstone. He thinks the show’s Indian Nation, whose claim to the land is older than the Duttons’, is most justified in its actions. In the aftermath of Native American–led protests against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, it’s an urgent message: If Westerns are going to get their much-deserved comeback, it’s high time the Indians won.