Remember me
No one attracts more legendary movie stars these days than Taylor Sheridan. In the eight years since he launched Yellowstone and a subsequent TV empire, the prolific creator has built shows around Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Sylvester Stallone, Billy Bob Thornton, Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, and now Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, with Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, and Annette Bening set to soon join his ever-expanding universe soon. But who should be next?
Once Yellowstone became a pop-cultural phenomenon, Sheridan seemed to have icons flocking to his ranch, many of them making their first-ever foray into ongoing-series television, all wanting what he’d given Costner. Perhaps it’s the former journeyman actor in Sheridan that helps him understand how to appeal to performers, by giving them the type of material actors long for but aren’t always offered.
“There's so much depth to the way he writes his characters,” Landman star Paulina Chávez recently told me. “Each of these characters has a very deep backstory — and they're all messy. And I think that's what makes it beautiful and what people connect with. Things are so messy, people are messy, and it's very cool to embrace it and not guilt people for it.”
While somehow no Sheridan actor has yet to receive an Emmy nomination, Pfeiffer’s work in the first season of The Madison should change that this year. And coming on the heels of that show is Yellowstone sequel series The Dutton, starring Harris and Bening, who already look like natural fits. And, after a two episode guest spot on Stallone’s Tulsa King, Jackson is headed to Texas to headline Frisco King.
With a new billion-dollar deal at NBC Universal, as well as his ongoing Paramount dynasty, Sheridan isn’t one to slow down, and so we figured we could give him a hand in casting and suggest a few veteran A-list stars who seemed primed to be the next Sheridan series headliner.
Jeff Bridges
CBS Films/Everett Collection
Jeff Bridges has already appeared in a Sheridan project, of course—the duo were both Oscar-nominated for 2016’s Hell or High Water, which Sheridan wrote when he was still just an actor who asked to be killed off Sons of Anarchy so he could try and make it as a writer. Bridges starred in the David Mackenzie-directed western heist drama as a Texas Ranger on the verge of retirement who's tasked with investigating a series of low-level bank robberies.