Original ending with Kevin Costner and more
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from Season 5, Episode 14 of “Yellowstone,” “Life Is a Promise,” which premiered Sunday, December 15 on Paramount Network.
It’s been a long, dusty and bloody road for the Dutton family over the past five seasons of the hugely popular western series ‘Yellowstone’. As the season came to a close (before the launch of a Beth and Rip spinoff), viewers experienced a number of shocking deaths during the final few episodes, including one committed by a horse. But amid the bloodshed, there was also a sense of closure for this chaotic and influential Montana family. Executive producer of “Yellowstone” Christina Alexandra Voros wrapped the eventful final episode Variety.
Do you know what the original ending would have been if Kevin Costner had stayed?
I’ve never had a specific conversation with it William Earl Taylor Sheridan on where this would end before Kevin’s departure. I do know that cast members have talked about conversations they had with him early on – you know, Season 1 – where they got the sense that he always knew that the ultimate ending had to be the patriarch’s loss and death. are. the inheritance. But that information is almost second-hand to me. I do know that it changed the ‘how’, if not the ‘what’, but I couldn’t talk specifically about what that difference was.
I think the restrictions placed on Taylor with Kevin’s departure really brought out a side of his writing that I know people have mixed feelings about: the flashbacks and the way the season was structured in general. I actually thought it brought out another layer, the way he was wondering how to tell this story without the person you’re telling the story about. I thought it made for some really interesting creative choices. Sometimes limitations can be good art’s best friend because they force you to think creatively about things in a way that isn’t as easy as you originally planned.
We really get to know Travis this season, and it was fun to see Taylor play a cocky playboy. What do you think is the biggest way Taylor is like Travis in real life, and the biggest way he is different?
Taylor is a brilliant writer and a brilliant director, but I feel like I learned more from him as a general and as a businessman, or as much from him in that capacity as I did from him as an artist. You look at the journey he has taken from the beginning of ‘Yellowstone’, when he first directed a TV series starring Kevin Costner, to running seven shows at once and becoming one of the most talked about shows was. about names on television. This is due to his immense skill as a storyteller and his genius as a writer. It comes from his ability to change the rules of the game. Show me someone from twenty years ago who could live in Texas and shoot half a dozen TV shows from wherever he wants to live because he hates LA and he’s chosen a life that allows him to be productive to be, but also only conditions.
I think you see that with Travis. I think he’s a great salesman. I think he enjoys beating the system, and enjoys being able to literally and figuratively flip the script. I also think if you ask him, this was a very depressing season of television. Bringing in Travis provided a bit of comic relief in a season where you didn’t get much of that. That’s always been part of ‘Yellowstone’. Terrible things happen, you lose people, but then there’s a funny scene in the dorm, or there’s this great country musician that people don’t know gets discovered in this cameo. That’s always been part of the show’s DNA. So I think people were so wrapped up in the tragedy of this final season that some people forgot that there was always an element of comedy in this. It’s always been there, and he cast himself as the element that brought some of that levity, because everyone else was so absolutely devastated by the loss of John Dutton. You’d be hard-pressed to find Beth and Rip and Kayce’s comedy. I thought it was a pretty bold move on his part, but I think it benefited the story.
What was the choreography process like for the main fight between Jamie and Beth in the episode?
It’s all hands on deck. We’ve been very fortunate that the stunt coordinators who have been with this show since the beginning – Jason Rodriguez, Jordan Warrack and, when we first started, Wade Allen – are some of the best in the business. One of the things I love as a filmmaker is that the cast is so enthusiastic and dedicated that they want to do as much of it as possible, so it’s in their DNA. Of course there are places where you will use their doubles, they have also been with us from the beginning. They’ve learned the way the actors move and studied that, so you have that element for places where you want to pull the pad out and someone has to hit the ground and Kelly has twelve days left of filming and nothing can happen. her. But Kelly and Wes have been fighting most of that fight themselves, and even when they’re not taking or throwing a punch, the energy it takes to stay in that space emotionally is exhausting. So I think what people don’t realize when they see that fight is, yes, it looks real and bloody and gruesome, but just maintaining that mentality of being so ferocious takes a lot out of the actors to get into the head space to stay. Forget the milk and the bear spray and the stinging and all that. That’s the easy part. Kudos to Kelly and Wes for being able to remain in that extreme state of emotional war during that scene.
Luke Grimes said in a recent interview with Esquire that, during this part of the season, “a part of Kevin was gone, which meant that part of the conflict was gone.” From your point of view, do you agree with him on that assessment?
I didn’t see the quote that some of the conflict was gone. Someone sent me he says it was the easiest filming season we’d had, and I think that comes from many sources. I think this was the seventh year of making a story with largely the same crew that started making it from the beginning. I think something very beautiful has happened, where life imitates art and life imitates, where you take away the patriarch and everyone else has to fill that space on stage and be held accountable to carry that dramatic weight in the show. I think it’s actually a really beautiful thing for an actor, and I felt like the cast really stepped in this season to fill that space. That kind of work is energizing and gives new meaning to playing perhaps the same roles you play every year, because it’s all on your shoulders.
Ironically, the purpose felt by the characters having to figure out how to move forward was also felt by the cast, who had to figure out how to move on without someone who had taken on much of the storyline over all those years . seasons passed. It felt like everyone had this new energy, and the fact that we knew this was the last season… everyone knew how special what we were doing was and how much we loved each other as a creative family. So there was just a real sense of inspiration. No Yellowstone season is easy for anyone: you’re up against time and money, the elements, the weather and all that. But this season felt inspired and a lot of fun to make from start to finish, and I think it’s because everyone realized that this was our last chance to do this together and that every day was precious.
Just before the finale, we heard that the Beth and Rip spin-off was making progress. Have you been involved in any of the discussions about the show at this point?
No, it’s too early to tell. It would be foolish for me to try to guess or gamble on how Taylor alchemizes these stories in his brain. What I will say is one of the things about him as a writer that I have always been impressed by is that he writes as if something is going through him. When we did ‘1883’ I got a script on a Tuesday and the following Tuesday there were three more scripts and it just came as a force. If he has a story in his head, it comes out very quickly and it comes from a place that is mysterious to me. So I don’t know what the next story is for him, I just hope I’m there when he puts it on the page.
You’ve said you like to keep an eye on what fans are talking about during the season. Were there things you read with surprise or misconceptions you would like to address or correct?
It’s funny that it’s such a cross-section. There are people who can’t handle anything, and I think you know when you get to the end of the story, that’s just part of the human experience. It changes the lens through which you see. I mean, it happens in relationships. If you’re told this is the last person you’ll ever date in your life, you might be a little pickier. So I think people have fallen in love and haven’t had to think about it ending for six seasons, and then suddenly you know it’s ending and the stakes are high.
People have their ideas about how they wanted it to end because they feel a certain amount of ownership in storytelling because they’ve been following the story for so long. So I’ve seen the whole gamut of praise and snark, and people criticizing every corner of the political spectrum, from super-conservative red state values to wokeness. What’s interesting to me is that it brings up all these different, conflicting ideas about what this season is and everyone is looking at the same season. I think ultimately that’s the purpose of art, and that’s the purpose of stories: storytelling is to provoke these conversations. I think the fact that the reactions are diverse is a sign that we have done something right.
