Angelina Jolie: “I loved every minute of” Taylor Sheridan Dragging Me through ‘Emotional Hell’ for His $23M Thriller

Angelina Jolie regards her collaboration with Taylor Sheridan on their 2021 film as one of the best working experiences of her career in Hollywood.

angelina jolie, taylor sheridan.

Life has been nothing short of an adventure for Angelina Jolie.

The Hollywood actress dismantled the label of nepotism and quickly made the industry her own by proving her worth on screen and off.

As a star, she was indomitable, fierce, and incredibly seductive, and these traits went on to be the signature of Hollywood’s first female action star.

Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) [Credit: Paramount Pictures, Toho Co. Ltd.].

Meanwhile, Taylor Sheridan struggled for nearly 25 years as a struggling actor, not finding a foothold in the industry just as Jolie rose to the peak of her stardom.

When he finally recognized his own potential as a writer, Sheridan cooked up a handful of scripts that shook Hollywood out of its monotony and changed the industry forever.

The conjunction of Sheridan and Jolie was, thus, supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the studio and producers.

However, their film turned out to be an emotionally hellish experience and a critical, commercial disaster.

Taylor Sheridan and Angelina Jolie make history

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) [Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures].

It is not every day that one gets to see the industry’s best writer-director in charge of one of the most regarded actors in Hollywood.

Taylor Sheridan made history with his debut with Sicario in 2015 but it wasn’t until he got some of the biggest industry names to work with him on a project, even as a novice filmmaker, that studios recognized his ability to charm and impress A-listers.

As such, when studios asked Taylor Sheridan to convince Angelina Jolie to star as the lead of Those Who Wish Me Dead to sanction the making of the film, he immediately went to work.

Not only did he convince Jolie to step out of her temporary retirement, but take 2 months apart from her grueling court battle for custody of her children against ex-husband Brad Pitt.

In 2021, Taylor Sheridan directed and Angelina Jolie starred in the $23 million film that received mixed reviews from the critics.

Despite a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, fans remain divided on the film’s plotline as a surprisingly good thriller or an outrageously predictable story.

The movie was released in theaters as well as HBO Max simultaneously in the post-pandemic era.

Angelina Jolie praised Taylor Sheridan’s work ethic

Taylor Sheridan in Yellowstone [Credit: Paramount+].

As an actress who has worked with some of the most impressive filmmakers in the industry, Angelina Jolie was still pleasantly surprised after collaborating with Taylor Sheridan.

Their work on Those Who Wish Me Dead was a grueling experience for the director who divided his time between writing and perfecting Yellowstone while also reworking the script of and directing Angelina Jolie’s film.

Despite the negative experience on Sheridan’s part, Jolie was more than happy to let the director drag her through a hellish landscape and film routine.

In the writer-director’s credit, Jolie – who was then going through her post-divorce custody battle with Pitt – claimed in an interview with AP News:

We all have times in our lives where we are broken.

And we grieve and we’re not sure we have anything left in us.

I identified more with a part of her that didn’t feel she could do a lot, and hadn’t done this in a long time.

To be in this situation and have a director that is both sensitive and aware of the human experience, to go there and to feel it, but also to push you to find your strength and move forward.

It was really what I needed at that time.

Meanwhile, Taylor Sheridan took away something else from the experience.

As the burden of rewriting and directing the film weighed on his shoulders along with maintaining the schedule of Yellowstone at Paramount, he said:

You know, the character sort of drags Angie through emotional hell, and then I drag her through physical hell.

That’s how we made the movie.

To Jolie’s credit, the actress was not only up for the challenge but she says that she “loved every minute of it.” Unfortunately, Those Who Wish Me Dead is a forgettable watch for most of the audience.

Despite its stylish setting and tense thriller arc, it resigns to a generic Hollywood formula, and the film, in the end, fails to impress or surprise the viewers and struggles to linger as a dull afterthought in the audience’s mind.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is currently streaming on Max.