“Yellowstone is a punk rock, rebellious teenage, both middle fingers at TV and at Hollywood, and at a bunch of different things,” Sheridan said. “It breaks so many storytelling rules. And it was part pandering, part horse porn at sunset, and then part Benny Hill.” So, yes, Sheridan knows exactly what he made — and exactly why it worked.
What Is Taylor Sheridan’s Secret?
Sheridan wasn’t always the face of prestige Westerns. In fact, he barely graduated from high school, scored a 390 on the SAT English section, and spent 20 years trying to make it in Hollywood. According to Berg, that hunger became his superpower. “People have asked me what I think your secret is,” Berg said. “And I said, ‘Well, you take a smart guy with a lot of talent, and then you keep him caged up for 20 years. He’s just getting hungrier and hungrier, and then you let him out. The man’s gotta eat.’”
After the success of Wind River, Sheridan said he had lofty goals for Yellowstone — at least at first. But the chaos of filming changed his process forever. And he knew that Yellowstone wasn’t refined or cultured, but that was exactly what he was aiming for.
“I shot-listed every frame of Wind River, and then on the first day we had no snow. On the second day, we had a blizzard. I threw the shot list away and haven’t made one since. […] There’s a great writer named Gretel Ehrlich who calls it my horse opera because it makes no sense and it’s not trying to. And yet it’s a window into a world.”
It’s a world that Sheridan has created with immense success, too. To have started out wanting to make a Western show, a “horse opera”, and have it turn into a cultural juggernaut that has spawned two spin-offs already, with many more on the way — and turned Sheridan into the biggest television producer on the planet — is testament to just how much Sheridan stuck the landing.
