Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan breaks silence on Kevin Costner’s dramatic exit

Yellowstone showrunner Taylor Sheridan has shared his first comments on Kevin Costner since the star’s highly-publicised exit from the show.

In May, it was announced that the hit Paramount series, about a Montana landowner named John Dutton (Costner) and his warring family, will be coming to an end with its fifth and final season this November.

The news came amid reports about the lead actor locking horns with Sheridan and pulling out due to scheduling conflicts.

In a wide-ranging new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sheridan, 53, admitted that he was “disappointed” with Costner’s exit.

“It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it,” the creator said.

Weeks after Yellowstone’s cancellation, Costner, 68, revealed that he was putting his time and resources into a Western project of his own – a film 35 years in the making called Horizon: An American Saga.

Sheridan said: “My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project he wanted to direct. He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with Yellowstone. I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward [his preferred exit date],’ which we did.”

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In a 6 February report in Deadline, sources claimed that Costner only wanted to spend a single week shooting his scenes for the second batch of episodes in season five.

However, his attorney denied the report, saying: “The idea that Kevin was only willing to work one week on the second half of Season 5 of Yellowstone is an absolute lie.”

“My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered,” Sheridan said. “His creation of John Dutton is symbolic and powerful … and I’ve never had an issue with Kevin that he and I couldn’t work out on the phone. But once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting.

“He took a lot of this on the chin and I don’t know that anyone deserves it. His movie seems to be a great priority to him and he wants to shift focus. I sure hope [the movie is] worth it – and that it’s a good one.”

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Whatever Dutton’s fate, Sheridan assured fans it won’t be a “f*** you car crash”.

“Whether [John Dutton’s fate] inflates [Costner’s] ego or insults is collateral damage that I don’t factor in with regard to storytelling,” he said.

Sheridan is currently working on a Yellowstone spin-off starring Matthew McConaughey. The True Detective star is in late-stage negotiations for the role and the script is still in its infancy, Sheridan confirmed.

In a recent interview, Costner revealed that he’d mortgaged his own land in order to self-finance Horizon, which will span four films set in pre-and post-Civil War America.

“I’ve mortgaged 10 acres on the water in Santa Barbara where I was going to build my last house,” he said.

“But I did it without a thought. It has thrown my accountant into a f***ing conniption fit. But it’s my life, and I believe in the idea and the story.”

Yellowstone season five is set to premiere in November 2023.