“Yellowstone” might be a massively popular series full of dramatic deaths and sordid family in-fighting, but it turns out it’s also pretty realistic, too. “Yellowstone” is actually surprisingly accurate in many aspects, mostly due to series creator Taylor Sheridan’s commitment to writing what he knows and keeping certain elements of his neo-Western as believable as possible. The more soapy aspects of the show — which led Hollywood Legend Sam Elliot to trash “Yellowstone” — might not represent a dogged commitment to realism, but when it comes to cowboy stuff, Texas-raised Sheridan ensures his show rings true.
The show creator revealed his philosophy on writing the series in a promotional clip, saying, “I believe that if I make something look real, it will be dramatic because life is dramatic.” That apparently extends to casting himself in the series as horse trainer and certified cowboy Travis Wheatley. The Texas horseman and rodeo competitor shows up throughout “Yellowstone,” often to do business with Kevin Costner’s John Dutton III, patriarch of the Dutton family and owner of the titular ranch. But why did Sheridan decided to cast himself in the role when he could have brought in another actor and saved himself some time to write the ever expanding “Yellowstone” universe and its various spin-offs?
A North Texas native himself, Sheridan grew up around ranching, and even owned a 1,200-acre property himself prior to becoming an actor and writer. Now, he’s crafted an entire shared universe based in part on his own experiences. So, it stands to reason that, beyond the writing, he’d insert himself into that universe somehow. But there’s a little more to Sheridan’s casting as Travis Wheatley than that.
Taylor Sheridan was the only one qualified to play Travis Wheatley
In many ways, the true story behind “Yellowstone” is Taylor Sheridan himself. As CBS Sunday Morning noted during a profile on the writer and his hit series, he actually owns two ranches in Texas and provides most of the horses for his productions. Sheridan told the outlet, “All the horses, for the most part, in our business are terrible. They’re not very broke, they’re not very safe, which is one of the reasons you don’t see actors on them very often. I didn’t want to do that so I bought all the horses for the show and then taught the actors how to ride.”
Having essentially become the horse trainer for the “Yellowstone” production, Sheridan took the next logical step and cast himself as the actual horse trainer on the show. Prior to becoming one of Hollywood’s most prolific writers, Sheridan landed several roles as an actor, including a recurring role as Deputy Chief David Hale on “Sons of Anarchy” and small parts in TV shows such as “Veronica Mars” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.” So, when he couldn’t find an actor capable of riding a horse well enough to play the role of Travis Wheatley, he decided to embrace his past as a performer and capitalize on his real-life experience with horses by playing the character himself.
A promotional clip shows Sheridan putting the actors of “Yellowstone” spin-off “1883” through their paces in what he calls “Cowboy Camp,” with the writer saying, “I don’t rehearse with my actors. There’s no way for me to inform them what this way of life is, you just have to do it. I just take them out and put them to work.” All of which sounds pretty much like what Travis does on the main series. In that sense, Sheridan is both acting and not in “Yellowstone,” bringing a sense of authenticity to a series which benefits from such realism balancing out some of the more outlandish plot developments.