“Yellowstone” and “Succession” aren’t really birds of a feather, but it’s easy to see why folks are inclined to compare them all the same. On some level, both shows are familial dramas that center on a King Lear-esque patriarch whose children vie for control of their inheritance — the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, in the case of Taylor Sheridan’s mega-popular neo-Western drama — while also warding off the vultures circling from the outside. Personally, I could even picture a crossover where Connor Roy from “Succession,” after years of hanging out on his own swanky “ranch” in New Mexico, tries to snatch up the Duttons’ land in the hopes of fortifying his salt of the earth public image for his next sure-to-fail presidential run. (You know the Conheads would totally eat that nonsense up.)
Both series likewise begin with the line of inheritance being unexpectedly disrupted. In the case of “Yellowstone,” it’s the shocking death of cowboy hat-wearing paterfamilias John Dutton III’s (Kevin Costner) eldest son Lee Dutton (Dave Annable) in the show’s first episode, “Daybreak,” that throws the Dutton clan into turmoil. With his efforts to prevent Lee from being permanently killed off proving fruitless, this also meant Annable missed out on having a recurring role on one of the most-watched (perhaps the most-watched) TV series of the streaming era. On the plus side, he managed to impress Sheridan enough that the prolific writer/producer gave him a much more substantial part on his hit spy thriller show “Lioness.”
In addition, the CIA drama has finally allowed Annable to embrace his natural salt-and-pepper hair color in Sheridan’s Dad Television Universe (which is how we’ll refer to his many, many series until further notice) — something the actor wasn’t allowed to do during his brief time on “Yellowstone,” at Costner’s request.
Kevin Costner didn’t want to look ‘old’ next to Dave Annable
While it’s completely natural for a 40-something like Annable to be more salt than pepper when it comes to his hair tones (…wrote the person staring down the barrel of middle-age), it seems the 60-something Costner wasn’t comfortable with having a greying on-screen son in “Yellowstone.” Explaining to People that he didn’t have to pull out the hair dye for “Lioness” at the show’s season 2 premiere event, Annable recalled:
“I asked [to retain my natural hair color] and this one they said yes. I asked on ‘Yellowstone,’ and God bless Mr. [Kevin] Costner, he was like, ‘No — you’re going to dye it. I don’t want to look that old.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Copy that. That makes sense.'”
Mind you, John Dutton III is only meant to be a few years younger than Costner (who was 63 when “Yellowstone” debuted in 2018), so it certainly wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that his oldest son would’ve already been going grey by the time we met him. There’s also something to be said about this being a missed opportunity to better normalize the way people actually age in film and television, and how Costner might’ve done well to let his ego go a little and allow himself to actually look older the way someone like Harrison Ford has going all the way back to the ’90s. If nothing else, that would’ve heightened the show’s sense of realism when it comes to its depiction of modern American ranchers.
Then again, “Yellowstone” has always been more concerned with soapy melodrama than being legitimately accurate, so maybe it’s a little silly to expect that kind of subtle verisimilitude here. Either way, we’ll find out what fate has in store for John and the rest of the surviving Duttons when “Yellowstone” season 5, part 2 premieres on Paramount Network on November 10, 2024.