Yellowstone hasn’t run out of time yet, but that doesn’t mean that co-creator and executive producer Taylor Sheridan doesn’t already know how his addictive drama should end. At a presentation for the series on Friday at the Screen Actors Guild headquarters in Los Angeles, Wes Bentley (Jamie Dutton) revealed that Sheridan has a series finale in mind for the popular Paramount Network drama.
“He has told me that he knows how he wants to end it,” says Bentley. Gil Birmingham (Thomas Rainwater), Kelsey Asbille (Monica Dutton), and Dawn Olivieri (who plays Monica Dutton) were also on the panel (Sarah Atwood). “That happened long ago. He probably didn’t know how we’d get there, but he does now.”
When asked if he thinks one or two Duttons will have to die by the end of the show, Bentley said, “I’m not a Dutton.”
In fact, Bentley thinks his character is pretty much dead already. “I don’t think he’s just messing around. He does want his son to have something. I think he’s been seeing himself as dead since before the season started. He already knows what will happen to him in the end. He knows what’s going to happen, and he’s trying to get as much as he can out of it by making moves and taking chances.
“Is he just trying to stay in charge, or is he trying to do something with the land?” Bentley kept going. “I think Jamie has a lot of good questions, and that’s what makes him complicated. He makes a good case. He doesn’t always do things the right way or in ways that people like, but that’s just how he is.
Bentley and his co-stars don’t know what will happen next in the drama, but they’re going back to work later this month to film the episodes that will air this summer. Instead, the four actors told stories from the set and talked about what it’s like to work with Sheridan, who is known for being quiet and prefers to let the actors do the acting.
In other words, they don’t think Sheridan will say much before someone yells “action!”
Olivieri, who played Claire Dutton, the sister of Tim McGraw‘s James Dutton in the Yellowstone prequel, originally worked with Taylor in 1883. She now plays the vixen who gets Jamie to call for John Dutton to be removed from office. “And I’ve got to tell you when the director-writer doesn’t tell you how to act, the first thing you feel is total uncertainty. Because you think, “Oh my God, I sound awful.” I’m making a mess of things.
He hasn’t said a word to me, so I must have done something wrong. He’s just trying to figure out how to fire me, right?’ But that fear is really magic because it gives you the extra strength that you didn’t have before.”
Birmingham thought back to an early scene where he and Danny Huston (Dan Jenkins) had to act like they were playing golf. “First of all, it was supposed to happen at the golf club. They made me a completely new suit and everything. When we got to the set, Taylor said, “Today we’re going to play golf.” Oh, that’s cute, I said.
He told her to go to the pro shop and get set up. All he said was that. So Danny and I were out there with cameras set up, waiting for blocking. Then I hear, “All right, let’s go.” What? Nothing has been stopped. So we figure it out, and I say, “Oh, he’s going to come to fix it.” He was never seen again. I told Danny that I thought we were on our own. So we had to direct this whole scene ourselves.”
At the end of the panel, the actors talked about some of the stranger things they’ve done for fans. Asbille remembered how a cop approached her at Walgreens because he thought she was famous. He didn’t really know who she was until he saw her dad wearing a Yellowstone T-shirt.
Asbille’s “Big Fan” dad said, “He might as well have had an arrow on the shirt pointing to me.”
Olivieri described how a clerk at the local hay shop in Arkansas, where she owns a ranch and horses, was doubtful of her celebrity status and requested her to wait until his family arrived to verify her identity.
“Then the cousins showed up in their car, and Jim Bob came after them on his tractor,” Olivieri remembers. “This town is so small. I was there for about 30 minutes, and my whole extended family kept coming to see what was going on because they couldn’t believe it.
Bentley said that most of his fans only want to find fault with Jamie. “I go to counseling, which is strange. They want to talk to me about all of his problems and what’s wrong with him. Or they yell across the room at me about how much they hate me. But they are smiling, which makes me feel safe. No one has been following me yet.”
