“A lot of it had been put together because of me”: Kevin Costner Had a Very Personal Reason for Saying Yes to Yellowstone

Kevin Costner may have been burned by Westerns one too many times, but his love for the genre remains ever so strong as proven by Yellowstone.

For a long time, Kevin Costner had commanded Hollywood’s new frontier of Western cinema, be it through the lens of classics like Wyatt Earp or period crime thrillers about 20th-century outlaws like The Highwaymen.

The actor’s string of poor luck in Hollywood since the late 90s defined his fall from grace and his insistence on not doing a sequel prevented his rise back up again.

Kevin Costner in Wyatt Earp [Credit: Warner Bros.]

After spending nearly two decades simmering in relative obscurity, it was Taylor Sheridan’s 21st-century neo-Western epic, Yellowstone that turned Kevin Costner into a legacy maker. Not only was the actor breathing life and soul into the story but his presence turned Yellowstone into a modern classic.

The late revival of Kevin Costner and Western genres

Kevin Costner in Yellowstone [Credit: Paramount+]

Taylor Sheridan blew into town like a hurricane – cool, determined, precise to a fault, and with a genius ability to tell stories like no one else. His legacy was defined by the first script that he ever wrote, Sicario, and he continued to build his visionary body of work with one critically acclaimed success after another like Hell or High Water and Wind River.

In 2018, Sheridan made a move to television after Paramount gave him the freedom to execute his artistic vision untampered and unhindered by studio politics. By then, Sheridan already established his obsession with Westerns, and Yellowstone became a product of his fixation with the obsolete genre.

It was merely a logical train of thought to then pick Kevin Costner to lead the epic arc of Yellowstone, considering he was the last true Western actor in Hollywood. Taylor Sheridan had tailored the role of John Dutton to fit Costner and the decision paid off beyond measure when the series branched off into a multi-season epic with multiple spin-offs, all launching to critical acclaim.

Kevin Costner had a reason to bond with Yellowstone

Kevin Costner and Luke Grimes in Yellowstone [Credit: Paramount+]

Kevin Costner was not entirely lost to the fact that his status in Hollywood was under inspection when he took on the role of John Dutton. Yellowstone was an experimental project by a relatively new and unseasoned writer who had made three films before taking on this massive project. It was the perfect soft reboot that Costner’s career needed and the actor took on the challenge.

Originally planned as a single-season epic with movie-length episodes, Kevin Costner signed on to Yellowstone after being fascinated with the premise of fifth-generation cowboys making a living out of the cattle and ranch business in the politically charged and corrupt reality of Midwest America in the 21st century.

In 2019, speaking about how the series and the role was tailor-made for him, Costner revealed in an interview with Good Morning America:

When I was approached with this, it was going to be one long 10-episode movie, and somewhere along the line, the show got put together and it was no longer going to be that. And I felt, in a way, that a lot of it had been put together because of me agreeing that I would do it.

And so, lo-and-behold, it went from one season to suddenly… a multi-season thing, and I had to make a real fundamental decision there. I thought, if I would’ve said, ‘Well now I’m not doing it,’ that maybe it might have crumbled before it got started. So I kinda took the weight on of emotionally not wanting to have the show crumble

Despite the weight of bearing responsibility for the whole show, Kevin Costner stood by for 5 seasons before his relationship with Taylor Sheridan began to sour.

In June 2024, Costner announced that he would be leaving the show, and his character was written off in an off-screen death in the premiere of Season 5B, the final arc of the series.

Yellowstone is available to stream on Paramount+.