Director of John’s Death Scene and Beth’s Screams

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “Yellowstone” Season 5 Episode 9, “Desire is All You Need.”

Sunday’s episode of “Yellowstone” was a game-changer, as patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) was killed off after the actor decided not to return to the show. As shocking as the event was, the aftermath has reverberations that set the tone for the entire season.

Director Christina Alexandra Voros spoke with Variety about the intense emotions evoked during the filming of the episode, how the crew supports the cast on complicated shooting days and what sequel series ‘The Madison’ will have in common with ‘Yellowstone’.

There was a long time between filming the first and second half of season 5, and Kevin Costner also left before filming the second half. What was the atmosphere like on set getting everyone back together for the first time?

It was pretty awesome. We’ve all been together as a family for so long, and then we had a long break between the strike and Kevin and all that. I think everyone felt very excited to be together again, but also a huge sense of obligation as storytellers. I think when everyone is done with the show, everyone is tired and wants to go back to their family and take care of their lives. But when that time passed, everyone was thrilled to be back together in the same beautiful place – summer in Montana – to tell this amazing story. It was pretty amazing.

What was the biggest challenge in the long period between filming the two parts of the season?

We are lucky that it is really a big family. There are people who have been on the show every day since the first season, so there’s a great abbreviation. Coming back isn’t as hard as you might think because we’ve all been doing it for so long. It’s muscle memory.

I think the challenge this year is that the writing was so ambitious and resonant, deep and heavy. The actors had to go places they hadn’t been yet this season, and it asked a lot of them all. There have been seasons of fireworks exploding, gunfights and horses streaming down the mountain. The fireworks this season are truly emotional and performance-oriented. The cast left it all on the floor. One of the highlights of my career was watching some of Wes’ performances [Bentley] and Col [Hauser] and Kelly [Reilly] and Luke [Grimes] given to the show this season. It’s just breathtaking.

Kelly’s screams during this episode were so primal. How did you discuss the scenes that took so much out of her emotionally?

My creative relationship with Kelly is one of the things I cherish most about my career as a storyteller. She always brings it. I don’t think anyone knows how hard she works, how deep she searches, how vulnerable she allows herself to be. But I also think there is a deep trust for her fellow actors, for the crew. There is a confidence that she will be taken care of, that she will be given the space she needs to mine such a performance. There is a lot of communication.

My first AD, Kether Abeles, is a master at designing schemes to protect actors, to help them preserve their resources. It’s a holistic approach to building a season with much of it based on the emotional demands placed on the actors. Let’s rehearse, let’s set everything up, let’s wait until the light is perfect, let’s know exactly where the cameras are moving for the second setup, let’s have our focus markers all ready. Then it’s almost like Tai Chi: you move from one step and everyone knows where it’s going. Everything is very quiet, not, “Oh, my God… We have to get this done before the sun goes down.” You can’t do that in a scene like that and get that performance. You have to set the table so that performance can be brought to you.

How did you decide how much of the crime scene with John’s body to show?

I can’t talk William Earl Taylor [Sheridan]’s thoughts while writing it, but what I want to say is that it was absolutely a choice to recognize that death becomes real when you see its effect on the people who are still alive. You could take a three-minute shot of a body on the ground and that would mean less than 30 seconds of Kelly’s face looking at that body. The emotional impact of death is more interesting than death itself, and I think that can be said about the entire season.

You could have made a whole season of, “Oh, how is John Dutton going to disappear?” Or you could go in the first five minutes, and then we know that no one knows what’s going to happen next. There are so many other questions that need to be answered. I was shocked when I first read the script, but when I started seeing where he went for the rest of the season, it made so much sense. It was such a bold move. It left so much more room for the characters and the actors who embody those characters to really grow into the truest, purest versions of themselves – the strongest but also the most vulnerable. The juxtaposition in these flashbacks of seeing what life was like compared to the grim reality of this new paradigm is a beautifully complicated way to deepen the impact of this loss. I think the audience will be a little off balance, just like the characters will be off balance.

You are also working on the “Yellowstone” sequel series, “The Madison.” What can “Yellowstone” fans look forward to with that show?

It’s such a different story. The common basis is the landscape. We’re in Montana, but it’s seen through a very different lens, so it feels like another facet of this cut stone that’s been polished. There are parallels in the scope of the landscape and a person’s place in that space, but you look at it from a completely different point of view.

This interview has been edited and condensed.