Hey, it's me again.
It's Jefferson White with a very special episode of the Official Yellowstone Podcast, presented by Win las Vegas. I woke up this morning extremely excited about today's show. You know, I didn't expect to get much sleep last night because I was so excited. However, the beds.
Here extremely comfortable.
They have these very very fancy shades that sort of block out all of the light of the strip.
So I slept like a baby.
And I'm very grateful because this is a huge, huge day for me. Today I get to sit down with the brains behind the entire world of Yellowstone. You've heard this man's name over and over again if you've been listening to this podcast, if you've ever had a chance to talk to the cast of Yellowstone, you hear the name Taylor Sheridan over and over and over again. Because honestly, this whole thing, this whole show, this whole universe, this
whole world comes from Taylor. Taylor is the mastermind, the genius, the brilliant creator, writer, director, cowboy kind of the maestro behind Yellowstone. He's also my boss. He gave me the best job I've ever had in my life. He's been my boss for years now, so you can imagine how nervous I am to sit down and talk with my boss to interview my own boss. So, you know, pray
for me, wish me luck. I'm also going to be spending time with the superstar executive producer of the Yellowstone World, David Glasser, another man without whom none of this would be possible. I owe the best job of my life to these two guys, Taylor Shared and David Glasser, and I can't thank them enough. We're going to dive right
in right after this. I feel incredibly honored, incredibly lucky to have with us in the studio today, the busiest man in Hollywood who never sets foot in Hollywood, A guy who I think his work is honestly characterized by staying too busy to talk about it. Much so, Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone, the creator of eighteen eighty three, Mayor of Kingstown, and many many, many, many more facets of a vast empire. Thank you so so much for being here today.
How'd you get this job?
A great question? I thought I was actually going to ask you that question, boss, How did I get this job?
I said, who's doing the podcast? They said Jefferson and I said who. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, Jimmy. And I said, oh Jimmy. Fuck did Jimmy get a podcast? You have your own podcast?
Yeah, that's right.
I was talking to Eric Nelson the other day and he said, we should send a picture of us to Taylor, and I say, he's not going to recognize me.
That's a busy man.
Hey. So you were in you were in Fort Worth a week ago for the celebrity cutting for the charity, the cancer charity. That's right. They do every year, which you won two years in a row.
Now, that's right. Well, the trick is that I won when this year I won because you weren't writing, in wasn't writing, and Nick won the year that I didn't write.
So this year I lucked out.
No, you got a buckle two years in a row.
Yeah, to twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one, Nick, one in between because you were busy. You were busy making maybe the biggest television show in history.
Well, you know, maybe the most expensive.
How does it this is? I've seen the first two episodes of eighteen eighty three, and the thing that I think that you do that nobody else can do is hold these two seemingly contradictory things at the same time, which is the myth of the West, the legend of the West, and the brutal truth of the West sort of hand in hand. That's something that to me characterizes Yellowstone and very much characterizes eighteen eighty three. There's the myth and there's the reality, like nobody else can do it.
Will you talk just a little bit about those two extremes, the romance tick idea of the West and the brutal truth of the West.
Well, the romance everyone understands. We were taught it in schools and we've seen it in movies and TVs since movies and TVs shows were made. And there is a romance to it. There's a romantic notion to going somewhere new and discovering some new place that holds this this hopeful utopia. The reality is there were other people already living there that that really didn't want anyone else to come there because they were there and they'd been pushed there.
So you know, if you're really going to and then that doesn't mean that there weren't heroes that went west. That doesn't mean there weren't heroes that defied those who went west. But to really understand our history, you have to be willing to look at all of it and not blanketly say this whole group over here were victimized, this whole group over here where oppressors. It's it's not true.
There were there were extremely desperate poor people in Central Europe and Eastern Europe and in the United States that were sold a lie that this land was open and free, and they were desperate and sought it. So they bought the lie, and then they went west, and by the time they realized it was not the truth, there was no turning back.
And I feel like that contradiction is very present in characters in eighteen eighty three. So there's Sam Elliott's character, Shay, who has seen who has confronted this terrible truth to a certain extent, and kind of carries it with him everywhere it goes. It feels like it haunts him. And then there's Isabelle's character who is so new to this world and sees it as that romantic idea, and then it feels to a certain extent as though the show
is the process of her learning the terrible truth. It's this slow process of being confronted with the brutal reality of what it takes to make that dream come true.
Yeah, yeah, to a degree, yes, one hundred percent, and she learns a lot more. It's really it was. It was very interesting to tell the story of moving into an unknown place through the coming of age of a young woman and getting to you know, the further west you go, there is no rule of law, so all of the social convictions and moral codes and customs that help keep us in line don't exist. And what happens when that happens. Incredibly beautiful things happen, and horrific things happen.
In Yellowstone, you have a group that is attempting to hold onto a code that they've lived by for a long time, as other people without a code come in or at least without their code, so they have similarities. I wonder if you picked up on any of the subliminal connections between the two.
To keep uncovering those And I feel like thematically, I see these these sort of themes throughout a lot of your work. Right, there's like the narrative, like the contradictory and conflicting narratives to a certain extent, and yeah, that confrontation between narrative and reality. And I think, as you articulated a minute ago, the incompatibility of well meaning people with codes that they truly believe in and and seek
to honor. You can have good people really trying their best to protect their families, and those those can come into conflict with each other and be mutually exclusive to a certain extent.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, and.
It's amazing, I mean, just embodied. Also, those contradictions, you know, not to sort of obviously be a sort of dollar story, a dramatic here, but but the sort of Sam Elliott is the theoretically to John Dutton, this sort of world weary soldier who has sort of seen this code be tested and sort of fail, has fought through its failure many times and becomes.
Lost everything he fought for. So what do you fight for when you've lost everything?
And I guess Yeah.
Then being presented with this new hope to a certain extent in the eyes of young people, of people who haven't had the same sort of you know, traumatic experiences over and over and again over the course of a long and painful life, and I especially then there's this this middle generation in eighteen eighty three that I maybe sort of lines up with Casey's journey in Yellowstone to a certain extent, So James Dutton's experience in eighteen eighty
three of having lived one life, having seen terrible things, but still having an enough left to try for something better, to try to sort of escape the cycle of violence that he was exposed to in the Civil War and to seek, you know, freedom from that cycle.
Yea, his venture west is a complete rejection of the society that he lived in. It's a refusal to even be a part of it anymore. So he went to a place society doesn't exist.
And that's fascinating. Then also sort of embodied in the contradiction between his wife's character, obviously Margaret Dutton and her sister, who have these sort of different relationships to that society, right, different ideas, one diferent carryovers from that society of how a woman is supposed to be, of what what her role ought to be in society, and then how, you know, how Isabel Meae's character sort of is also coming into conflict with that and sort of figuring out for herself
what her role can be here versus what it was in the life she knew before.
One hundred percent. No, she's going to a place to where all of the restrictions that existed to control everyone, to control women, to control people who didn't own land, to control people who weren't in power, they don't exist. And you get to decide. You get to decide who you are and how you live, and no rule controls you. The flip side of that coin is no rule controls anyone else out there too. So long time ago, million years ago, whenever, three million years ago, there were no rules.
People took what they wanted to take when they wanted it. If they were strong enough to do it, they got it. If they weren't, they lost it. And as society grew, as people stopped running around and chasing food and started growing it more, we all had to live together in this place. We had to figure out rules of some form. Right now, some people figuring out rules, figured out rules to control others to get more stuff. Some figured out rules to try and make this little tribe work better.
And it's been the same throughout history. And it's not unique to the United States or Europe, or Asia, or Africa or South America. It is human nature and it exists anywhere we go. If we go to Mars and someone sets up a village in Mars, they better make some rules, or somebody who doesn't respect rules, and that person is still going to cause problems, but now at
least we have rules to control them. Or maybe someone's going to go to Mars and set up a lot of rules that make sure he's the king of Mars.
That theme feels like it's present through all of your work. Effectively, that idea of code's rules trying to establish a system, whether it be through a state institution, you know, whether it be through like actual legal pathways or a kind of paralegal system code. You know, in the case of the characters of Mayor of Kingstown or of the Duttons, obviously their code is sort of legal adjacent, but obviously
also it breaks the law consistently. That feels like a theme that sort of resonates throughout all of your work.
To me, it's the most important theme, and we have not mastered it right. The rule of law and the laws of nature. We're bound by the laws of nature. There's nothing we can do about that. So we've created a rule of law to govern ourselves. And you're seeing right now an erosion and the rule of law in this country. And as a result of that, you are seeing the laws of nature play.
Out and the sort of simultaneous as you articulated earlier, the beauty and possibility of freedom, the sort of ideal, the kind of paradise that freedom can represent, and the hell that freedom can represent, the sort of brutal reality, the most brutal truth. And especially in the very first moments of eighteen eighty three, the whole the way the whole series is framed, I think is fascinating. And the intro,
the first sequence, she describes it is hell. She describes this west, this wild place, this place outside of the parameters of polite society, as hell. And then the next time we see her heaven.
It's heaven exactly.
Yeah, and that's and that's Look, we're in Las Vegas, Okay. Someone right out there right now, just one hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he thinks this this is the greatest place on Earth. Two craps tables over. Someone just lost their mortgage. He thinks this is the worst place on Earth. What's different the way they interacted with it, that's.
It so as you seek, as you see it.
And I don't know if gambling is the best metaphor for that, right, because we're adding a certain element of luck. But there's a lot of luck to life. There's a lot of luck to life. Now, you make a lot of really bad choices, you're going to find yourself usually having bad luck. You make a lot of good choices, you're going to find yourself having a lot more good luck. Right. But we all know pretty bad people who have gotten real lucky, and I know some really good people who've
been really unlucky. As is so deep, Jimmy, I thought we were going to talk about like the horses.
Well, this is the thing. This is the thing that I think, I think is incredibly unique to you. There's a lot about the way that you write that I don't think anybody else does. And I think that that is in part what I respond to in your writing.
It feels like there's an unflinching honesty and an unflinching willingness to confront some of the ugliest and most hideous contradictions of life, of like life at its most fundamental, you know, and then also on the other side, what's amazing is you also have the incredible ability to write fun, captivating, exciting, beautiful things, And I think that's a very difficult thing.
So I guess I'm curious also as you seek to make these things as you in your life, the myth of your life, the narrative of your life, as you continue to explore that and live it out sort of, will you talk to me about the experience of reconciling your work, your work sort of staring into the abyss, as it were, with your work staring into Eden, staring into paradise?
Is there a question in there?
Barely barely? Boss?
What the fuck was? I know?
Listen, you got me trying to sound smart. Listen on Yellowstone, John Dutton is exploring a lot of different options to sort of economically save the ranch. And I look at you as as a man who is an advocate for the Western world, is a sort of diplomat on behalf of the Western world to a certain extent, explors a lot of different avenues to continue to economically reinvigorate the Western world. Will you talk about some projects that you're working on that you're excited about.
Well, this is this this beast right here's kind of consume me for the past nine months. So I don't beyond this, I don't I don't know what projects next. I haven't seen my mail and you know, since April. But but you know, I try to be an advocate for for the West. I grew up in it. It's an it's an incredible place, and it's changing, like everything changes, but we try to control the change. We try to mitigate the change. You live in New York, which is
a great city. Uh and and and it's frustrating though, to watch Manhattan become because I lived in New York in the nineties, to watch Manhattan become this theme park of it itself to a certain degree, with these massive, expensive department stores, and in all the neighborhood last time I was there, it's been a few years, but all the mom and pop, all this great little diner over here, in this little cafe here, in this place, they're all
gone because they can't afford the rent. No one could say that, well, they can't say it right now, but prior to COVID, they could say, well, the crimes, there's no crime in it's so clean, it's so great, and there's so many great restaurants that no one can afford to go to and there's no and there's but the city. It's not the city that we all grew up to the city we all in my youth, when I was there in my early twenties, and you're there now. It's
in Brooklyn. It's migrated, right, Well, the West can't migrate. You build these places up. Then that's what they are, right, And whether we like it or not, we got to get our food from somewhere, and every empire falls when they start importing it. When you do not control your own food source, you are no longer an empire. You are buying your food from the next empire.
Speaking of empires, right, the sort of horse world and the horse training sort of legacy history, tradition culture. Will you talk a little bit about that. That's something that's been increasingly explored in Yellowstone season four, as John Dutton and the Yellowstone sort of get into that game. Will you talk about your own experience in that world.
Well, I grew up in and it was a dying It was dying after the recession of two thousand and eight because the performance horse world it's a luxury. Now there's people who make a living doing it, and you've met a lot of them, whether they're horse breeders or horse trainers or veterinarians who work in the performance horse world that are specialists, like basically sports medicine doctors for horses. But it's a luxury to own one and go show
it on the weekend, not unlike people who own racehorses. Right, it's the racehorse trainer's job, it's the jobey's job, it's the exerciser's job, and the groomer's job. But it's not the owner's job. Owner rodes some big stinking company somewhere, right, and if the stock market crashes, he may have to sell his race horse, and so will all the others. But what and the same thing is true in cutting
or reining or cow horse. But what happens is when that business isn't thriving and it starts to restrict the horses that get bread and the babies that you have, you start to see the quality of horse across the country dip because people are not as invigorated to explore
as they're breeding these animals and making more horses. The more people who are in the horse business, the more horses you need, the more horses are bred not to the same horse, and the hybrid vigor of that makes a better horse population, better horses for the cowboys down the street, better horses for the little girl that's going to go barrel race or pole bend or do any kind of versatility events. So it improves the whole industry. And there's still no better way, say, and easier on
the cattle way to work cattle than horses. Can't work them on dirt, Bikes can't. Dogs are too rough on them. They don't mind horses, and they move away from them when you go toward them, and that's how you move them around. They're not stressed by it. So I really wanted to and that's one of the reasons I wrote Yellowstone, because this whole way of life after that recession was crashing and all these generational ranches and that sounds like
this big rich term, but it's not. It's somebody eighty years ago, ninety years ago bought a bunch of real cheap land that's pretty useless for anything but running cattle, because if you could farm it, you would, and they made a living selling cows. Not a lot of them do. You don't make very good money at it, and the land values kept going up and up and up and up and up until when they died and their kids inherited it, they couldn't afford the taxes, so they have
to sell it. So then some guy from Chicago who went skiing there a few years ago, Man, I sure would love a place to go out in the weekend break my family go scan. So it gets carved up and developed and gentrified, and then they have that. Now it's a free country, right, So who's to say the guy in Chicago can't or shouldn't be able to buy a place out in Montana or Wyoming. Well, no, he should, but I'm trying to encourage him to not carve it up. I'm not saying you have to run cattle out there,
but how about you just go experience it. How about we preserve it because they ain't make it anymore. We have not figured out how to make more land and we never will.
And it feels like, yeah, I mean an extension of your respect for this history, right, you as a remarkable historian to a certain extent of this world. And it's an incredibly exciting thing for me, as a fan of Yellowstone, for you to explore that history very literally with eighteen eighty three to step into that history. So I'm getting a signal that I think we're out of time. Thank you so so so much for doing this. It's an
honor to as always continue to learn from you. I'm incredibly grateful for four and a half five years of learning from you now, and I can't thank you enough for the many ways in which you've changed my life. So thank you very much.
Well, thank you, thank you for that.
I can't thank Taylor enough for stopping by today. That man's time is very, very valuable, and I'm grateful for every second of it I get. Every time I talk to him. I learned so much. I look up to Taylor so much. I've been learning from him for years, and every minute with him is a masterclass.
So I'm very very grateful. I need to take a quick break.
When we come back, we're going to continue to talk behind the scenes with executive producer David Glasser. I feel so lucky, so humbled, so grateful to have today in the studio with me.
David Glasser.
David Glasser is an executive producer of Yellowstone of eighteen eighty three of a million other television projects in the Taylor Sheridan universe and beyond. He's the CEO of One on one Studios. David, thank you so so so much for being here today.
Thanks so much, my friend. Thanks for having me.
It's such an honor and simultaneously a terrifying pressure to interview your boss's boss's boss's boss's boss.
So now it's all good man. I could not be more excited to be here and so proud of everything you're doing. And you know, this journey we've been on from the beginning has been incredible, man. And right back at you, I could not be more proud of you. Man, everything you're doing, the character, you know, everything you've taken us on and in this show. Right here, you know, sitting here at the Wynn Hotel doing a podcast on Saturday afternoon, couldn't be a better day.
I think it really speaks to something that I'm It just sort of strikes me over and over again. And for folks listening who don't necessarily understand the role of a producer, a producer means a lot of different things
in a lot of different situations. Basically, so will you talk for just a second about your and It's hard to talk about because it means so many different things, and you, particularly more than anybody I've ever known, fill a lot of different roles under a lot of different circumstances. We just talk a little bit about your role in all of this.
Yeah, you know, it's Look, it's an incredible and very humbling opportunity to get because when you have a creator like Taylor Sheridan, he's a big picture visionary, right, He's got this huge idea, he's got this incredible cast, and then my job is to make sure that we execute upon that, right. So it's everything that goes into it, from making sure that we stay on budget, we get our locations, we get things done, you know, the sort of relationship with the network and sort of just spending
plates and managing it all. So at the end of the day, what everybody gets to see this incredible number one show now comes with sort of being part of this team. And it's really a team effort, right. It's it takes a village to do what we do. And it doesn't matter whether you're at the top of the food chain or a pipa on our set. You know you've been there and working on a Taylor Sheridan show. It's not about I, it's about we, and it's not about me, and it's about how do we do things
as a team. And that's the really, I think, the great thing, and so I'm super lucky to be part of that. And as you know, every time we get one of these scripts, it's like, you know, the greatest day of my life. It's like I'm working on some of the greatest material I've ever read.
What, as you described, so much of it is a team effort. It's about an ensemble of collaborators. And one of your roles particularly is as symboling that team is taking these elements, these elements that can seem sometimes almost irreconcilably far apart, right the world of cowboying all these horses, right like putting together all of these cows, these cattle, with these helicopters, with these legendary actors, with these incredible
technicians in our camera department. It feels like one of the unique challenges of Yellowstone is assembling a lot of different elements that don't traditionally fit together. And it feels like part of the people response to yellows notice about these things is seeing these these these elements combined on television for the first time on a scale that wasn't possible until you started doing it.
Well, look, that's the exciting part about it. You know, as a producer, you get to do different things right, You almost get to make yourself up as a completely different person as you sort of go forward. You know, it was a world that I didn't know. And with Taylor Sheridan, as you know, you get a very quick education on what to do, what not to do, and where are the pitfalls. You know, he is the expert when it comes to the cows, the cattle. My job
is to make sure that everything is getting there. It gets done when it is. But listen, I've I've learned the world. I've learned to actually respect the world at the highest level because it's truly incredible. I love our wranglers and our cowboys and the people that I've met both on the show and off the show. And even in one late night, maybe slightly drinking night with Taylor, I ended up buying a cutting horse, which we now own.
So we own a cutting horse, and I think, you know, it was great because we made it the futurity on the first time, so it was like it was great because I really thought I actually knew what I was doing,
but it was a little bit of luck. But you know, it's one of those things where I think, as you sort of you know, as you know, you get into a new world like this, it's all brand new, and so I think sort of watching Taylor's lead and following it and sort of figuring out, Okay, what does he need, how are we going to do it, and how we're going to execute what he wants and that's the job, right And we've learned so much now we're now you know, not everybody is a is a cutting champion like you,
my friend after last week at the at the Caarity event, so you know, don't worry. We all know where you're going in your cutting career.
I thank you so much. You were contractually obligated to mention that, and I thank you for obliging that that contract as.
Sheridan's will be very happy.
As I talked to all these different actors and sort of crew involved in these shows, something that comes up over and over again is the immersive quality not just of the content itself, not just of the show, but also the experience of working on the show. Working on these shows means being fully immersed in a world that is new to a lot of us. Right for us, it means being in Montana, it means being in West Testing, being in West Texas, being surrounded by the world even
as you create it. So will you speak about your experience also of traveling with these shows, of really being immersed in these worlds.
Look, I think you know, starting with Cowboy Camp that most people want I explain what Cowboy Camp is. It's sort of Taylor's version of, you know, leaving the city behind, getting out there and sort of being one with the worlds who really understand it for you as an actor, but even for us producers and partners on the show. So sort of everybody can sort of do what they can. But I think the experience is part of what I
think makes the show what it is. We're all out there right on Yellowstone, We're out on that ranch or in those fields, you know, deep in those fields on a daily basis, working together. You know, we're not in we're not on a stage somewhere. You know very little of that. And on eighteen eighty three, that journey was something that was was definitely something I don't think I was ready for I think even for Taylor he was ready for it. He warned us what it was going
to be. But taking a wagon train in the eighteen hundred show with thirty wagon trains across America is pretty spectacular, and there's no cover sets. We maybe had a few days of cover sets, and a cover set is a place you can go to when it rains, when it snows, when it's ninety eight degrees outside. Once we got outside
of Fort Worth, that was it. We were open to everything, and so in a way it sort of felt like you were connected to maybe what people went through at that time, and they had such a harsher journey than we had, you know, crossing rivers, surviving to sort of make something better for your family. So in a weird way, you had a moment to sort of think and go, wow, this is we're sort of out in the open here just trying to figure it all out.
Yeah, I think that a lot of what people respond to, what I respond to when I see the show, especially as I watch eighteen eighty three, is this incredible feeling of authenticity that can't help. It's a part of the product because it's a part of the process. It really the process of making the show mirrors the experience that
you're depicting on the show. You're taking a bunch of people from all over the world, incredible people with varied and diverse skill sets and backgrounds, many of them who have never set foot in West Texas before, and then many of them who have, who grew up there and who are experts in this world. And you're cooperating together on this journey that lasts from months and months and is arduous and taxing and difficult, and that bleeds into every frame of the show.
Yeah, and I think that was the incredible part. And I think you really you and your character symbolized it last year with the journey to the Four Sixes, you know, the most authentic storied ranches in the world since the eighteen hundreds, I mean, you know, and no way Taylor sort of blended that into our sort of not real ranch world of Yellowstone, which is, you know, a real world for TV and sort of taking Jimmy's character to one of the most authentic ranches in America.
Yeah, it's amazing. You know, there are those of us and one of the incredible gifts of the show is that for every actor from Los Angeles, there's a cowboy from New Mexico. And for every you know rancher from Montana, there's you know, a stunt coordinator from from the East Coast.
You know, there's a sort of incredible combination. And one of the tremendous gifts of our show has been watching so many people run at these new challenges, these challenges that are utterly unique, kind of over and over again, with tremendous respect for the material, with a tremendous sort of trust and commitment to each other. Because part of
what you described early are putting this team together. You guys are now You've made and you are making shows with this core group of collaborators from different backgrounds, different skill sets, who have grown to trust each other over time. How do you over and over again this is just as a fan of your work, of Taylor's work, you attract the best actors in the world. Like it's amazing
for me. My favorite actors who I've followed since I was a kid, Billy, Bob Thornton, Aiden Gillen, obviously, Sam Elliott, obviously, Kevin Costner the most a combination of the most interesting and sort of storied actors. It's amazing they trust you and when they join this kind of project, they're putting a lot of faith in you.
Look, I think, look everything at the end of the day, and you know, this being the incredible actor that you are, It all starts with the material. Right, material is the basis for everything. If you're going to build a house, it's your foundation, it's everything, right what you do inside of it, whether that's you know, whether that is you know, a different type of counter or marble or granted, whatever you do inside the house to sort of build it is something that you do in what you do. And
so I think always everything starts with the material. And with Taylor's material, it is something as you know, it attracts incredible different people who want to come work on it. And also you have this incredible time with Taylor. Be like I'm just thinking about Billy Bob Thornton for that role, and I'm like, all right, let me call his manager and like you send over it and he goes yes, or you go like, I'm thinking about Tom Hanks for that role and you like call time that reads it
goes okay. You know, it's like unbelievable. Like, so, I think it's it's his material. I have to give the credit rightfully due It's like his material is just something that everybody wants to come play a day, two days, five days, and to be part of. I mean, that's probably one of the most exciting things for me because when he wrote the role, He's like, I think I want Sam Elliott and I'm like, yeah, okay, well I'd score major points in my house with my wife if
we had Sam Ellie. But I would love to work with Sam Lely. And then you know, Sam reads it and is like, yes, So I think his material is something that's fresh, it's original, it's different, and it's a world we don't get to see every.
Day, and it has the gift of I think you guys balanced this so remarkably well combining these actors. You know, one of the themes of a lot of Taylor's work is that the American West and the sort of myth of the American West, the legend of the American West, coming into confrontation with the reality, the harsh truth of the American West. You know, the myth and reality colliding
into each other. When I look at the cast of eighteen eighty three Sam Elliott, of course American legend, a myth unto himself, and then young actors, right and combining sam Elliot's experience expertise a lifetime in the West with Isabelle May, right, an actor new to this world who brings something utterly distinct and unique to it because she's new to it. Right, So will you talk a little bit about about discovering new talent or bringing on young actors into these projects.
Look, that's always the thing, right, And Taylor and I have that conversation always. He sort of feels if he's going to bring some of the table, whether it's Isabelle may or Emma Laird or people that he's sort of discovered, he'll see somebody, you know, like he did with Isabelle. He hadn't really figured out and shaped the role yet he knew what it was going to be. But the minute he saw her, he knew she was the one.
She was the one who was going to tell this story and he was going to sort of turn the traditional Western on its head a little bit with this sort of point of view through an eighteen year old's eyes, you know, going through sort of just becoming a woman and sort of finding herself as well as trying to
protect her family. So I think the interesting thing about it is is, you know, because of his sort of background and being an actor, he sort of finds this way and we'll sort of have a conversation about finding so many fresh and new that we don't know yet, and that we get to sort of experience things. And I think when you watch Isabelle, I even feel, even five and ten times seeing a cut of something, I'm sort of discovering it with her. I don't know her.
I mean, I know her personally, but I don't know her as her character. I'm sort of sold on who she is and what she's going to be, and I'm sort of following her on our journey. If she's feeling pain, I'm sort of feeling a little bit too. If she's feeling laughter, I'm feeling that. So I think that's the
great part about it, right. You know, you and Jimmy, I remember when we were looking early on at reading for it, and you sort of I'll never forget they're sort of reading you did in the chair if you remember it, And you know, the minute Taylor saw it, he was like that guy. He's got what I'm looking for, and sometimes I don't know always get it. But Taylor
Start has this way. He knows he can look in sort of the eyes, the face, the sort of character, and he knows that that's who I want Jimmy to be, or that's who I want this character to be. That's a talent, you know. At that point it becomes much easier because I think then audiences get to discover somebody new and be part of that discovering them.
Yeah, And it's a real gift. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, it's the same gift. It's saying, who could possibly fill the roles of these walking legends? Right, Kevin Costner and John Dutton feel so synonymous in many ways, it's hard to conceive of anybody else playing that role because the character is himself a legend. He's a legend who carries a tremendous weight on his shoulders that everybody respects and has a sort of wary kind of relationship
to it. And that couldn't be anybody but Kevin and I think that's on the opposite side of the spectrum, the incredible gift of excellent casting I can't help but sort of like glean a worldview from a lot of Tailor's work, because and I think it relates in a lot of ways to those that juxtaposition, Right, the extremity, there's the beauty, the sort of big scale epic, the the incredible action sequences, and then there's this incredible human, simple,
quiet intimacy. And Taylor himself has an incredibly holistic approach to filmmaking. He's an amazing actor, he's an amazing writer, he's an amazing director, he knows everything about the camera department. He knows you know, he saddles, horses, rides like he sort of does all of this. Will you talk about as you produce Taylor's projects, as you're on set for Taylor's projects, what you carry from those projects into the other stuff you're working on.
Look, I think it's a discipline. I really think I think he brings. You know, the cowboy world is about discipline, right, if you sort of think about where he came from and where he grew up and sort of what he has done his whole life. Right, it's hard work. You're up early, nobody's complaining, You're doing your thing, and you're getting it done right, because if you don't get it done,
then you're letting other people down. And I think I've taken that with me and my sort of journey with him and sort of his ability is it's not about no or yes, it's about getting it done. And I think that's what I take with me in my lesson with him, of like when he wants something or he wants a certain a certain thing, my job is to get it done, is to figure out how to get it done for him, because that's the way of the
way he sort of understands. And our world sometimes in the Hollywood business is not always like that, right, It's always about trying to figure out, you know, what we can do. So it's that management of sort of knowing exactly what he wants and getting it done. And I think that discipline stayed with me because you're sort of out there with him and you're doing on his terms,
and his terms are, as you said, very smart. He knows what he wants, he understands it better than anybody, so I'm never going to argue with him, so I just have to figure out how to get it done.
I also think he carries something with him you know, there's a lot of language, a very sort of poetic lyrical language, both in Yellowstone and in eighteen eighty three about the inefficiency of this lifestyle in some ways, like cattle ranching in Montana. In Yellowstone, over and over again, it's revealed this is not the most profitable way to manage this land.
Right.
It's not about numbers, it's not about necessarily profit, it's not about progress by any like demonstrable, quantifiable metric. Part of it is just a labor of love. It's about tradition and a labor of love. And I also can't help but apply that same idea to filmmaking, Like filmmaking is far from the most efficient way in the world to make money, right, It's a kind of radically inefficient way.
Exactly.
It's a labor of love, you know. It's it's imagination, and it's sort of storytelling, and it's foundational I think, to people to share our stories. But it's also hilariously inefficient in so many ways.
I mean, our business sometimes doesn't make sense. I mean, as I say here today with maybe my CFO and my partner the room, we'd like to say it makes us a ton of money and that's the way we always go into it. I'm a little crazier, you know sometimes with wanting to do something because it's super passionate stuff. But you got to find that happy meeting. It's not
an easy business. And I don't think anything that Taylor goes into or we go into, is like this is going to be a home run, it's going to be the biggest show on TV. Now. We go into it because we think it's going to be something that we'll all really be really proud of. We don't know how it's audiences are going to take it. We don't know
if people are going to watch it. And I think that's the incredible thing also of having a partner like you know, Viacom and Paramount Plus and the Paramount Channel. You know, they sort of have a belief. I mean they bought Yellowstone off of reading one script in the room on a handshake with Taylor and I and that takes commitment, right, that takes vision. They had no idea that was going to be the behemoth that it is today.
So I think you have to have a lot of people believing in what you want to do to sort of get to make something happen the way you want. The actors have to sign up, the network has to sign up, we have to all sign up, and then we all kind of come into it and then we wait to see what happens. Amis read an article one time, I can't remember it was they analyzed all these jobs dentist if you do X plus Y equals you know Z, and all these jobs and the one job they never
could figure out was the movie and TV business. And it just makes total sense, like anything can happen, anything can really work, and anything can't. So I think we're very fortunate, all of us, you know, with you and Taylor, to sort of have this incredible sort of everybody that does everything. I mean, we all know each other, right, We've all become this big family, and I think that's something really special. I think also for Taylor, he never
set out to make TV his whole thing. At the end of the day, he always said to me is I don't want I don't want to do TV. I want to make ten hour movies. So let's go make a ten hour movie. If we can do that, I'll do it. Otherwise I don't want to do this, I said, Okay, let me think about that for a minute, and so we had to go into that without thinking everything that Taylor does is a ten hour movie. He wants it
to be beautiful. He wants to be strong, he wants to be powerful, and what he wants it to be is authentic bumps and bruises at all. You know, his new show Mayor of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner is sort of portrait of prison life in this town, but it's with bumps and bruises and all. It's raw, and it's not going to be for everybody, but it is a great show because Taylor doesn't hold back on being as authentic and real as he can be. And that's the
only way he knows. He doesn't know any other way like, and he's not gonna someone's not gonna take a note and say, dear Taylor, I think you should change that scene to this because it'll be better for you know, when we go ahead and play this in some foreign tarror. No, it's this is what you get. And he's serving up on a platter, and I think that's what makes him who he is.
It really it's brutally honest, yeah, and working. You know, as you said, all of this stuff represents a lot of trust. It represents a sort of collaborative agreement to take a risk, and that trickles down throughout our entire cast, our entire crew. That trickles down I think from you and Taylor, you guys inspire hundreds of people to work
their hardest, to believe in what you believe in. And I guess I just as the last thing I say as we as we run out of time here, because I'm so grateful for your time.
Thank you.
Is particularly shooting Season four of Yellowstone, to me, felt a little bit like it was uncharted territory. It was during the pandemic. It was the summer of twenty twenty. All of us left our homes, our families on the strength of this trust. We all took that risk together, and it was it was both things. It was both a risk that we were taking. It was dangerous and difficult to leave our families behind, but it was also the you put back. You put six hundred people back
to work. More than that, you guys took that weight upon yourselves. You protected the family that you had built for four years, and you put six hundred plus people back to work at an incredibly uncertain and difficult time. And I, for one no that I'll never forget it. You brought us all back to work, and you took care of us. You protected us, and you saw us from one side of that journey to the other.
You know, look, I appreciate that. And I remember having the conversation with Taylor and we're sort of it was right in a high of COVID and he had written the scripts and we're sort of scratching our head what to do, and we're getting calls from crew my unemployment's running out, or this happening, or I can't pay my bills, or we sort of thought about it and said, we're shooting in Montana. We could go into a bubble and
really protect ourselves and put ourselves back to work. And I said, what do you want to do, And without even a blink of an eye, Tailor said, We're going back to work. That's what we're going to do. And I said, all right, let's figure it out. And we went back and we went into that bubble, and where I really saw it was we're all working really hard, and nobody could do anything. Nobody go to rests. We had to all eat together and live together on the
ranch or really close housing. And then on those Saturdays and Sundays was interesting. All of us would grab a picnic blanket or something and just sit out on the ranch and talk and talk about our families and talk about who we're missing and what we're doing. But there was something really beauty in the ability for everybody to
sort of be together. And that season for me actually funny enough that you say, that was really special and I'm and to see the ratings the way they are today is just even more because for those of us that all worked on that season in the middle of COVID and we had everybody, you know, friends getting sick and people getting sick on the crew, and I mean we did a pretty incredible job in protecting ourselves but also sending everybody home with you know, they're sort of
feeling back that I'm okay and this is going to be okay and we're going to get through it. So it really holds a special place in my heart, and I think audiences have embraced that season, which makes it even even more special. So, you know, love and spending time with you today and thank you for everything. For the fans out there that don't know you. You put your heart and soul into the show for us. You're always, you know, there, as early as can be and as
late as can be, without a word to say. I remember us down at the four sixes and hanging out down there. So we all appreciate, and I know Taylor does, and I do, Network and all of us that want to want to appreciate everything you do for us.
Thank you so much, David, and thank you so so so much for being here today.
My pleasure.
Thank you, thank you.
Once again, a special thanks to you the Yellowstone family. Obviously, none of this would be possible without you, so thank you, so so so much for tuning in. We're going to drop new episodes every Thursday, so make sure to subscribe and tune in to the Official Yellowstone Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. The Official Yellowstone Podcast is hosted by me Jefferson White and produced by One on One Podcast Studios and Paramount Network.