Kevin Costner has been connected to a lot of projects throughout his tenure as an actor, with one of his most remarkable performances being that of John Dutton in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone lore. This is why, when fans found out the saga was going to get cut short because he was leaving to helm his own Horizon saga, they were nothing short of devastated.
That being mentioned, there has been a lot of controversy about how Costner was going to leave the lore and what was to happen to his character. And, the most recent solution to this problem, shared by the John Dutton portrayer himself, is a completely different one than the ones told before and is one that might as well end up upsetting the Western’s fans.
Kevin Costner Gets Candid About His Yellowstone Tenure and Exit
Although there have been multiple rumors, reports, stories, and theories about how Costner intended to leave the Yellowstone saga and what would have happened to his character, perhaps none comes as close to the story shared by the John Dutton portrayer himself, even though fans wouldn’t like this account all too much.
During a recent interview with GQ, the actor shared his own full account of what exactly went wrong throughout the time he was connected with the Western saga. According to him, he had originally only signed a three-year deal for the smash-hit series but even renegotiated that because he was so committed to it.
However, when he started to realize that things weren’t exactly going as planned and that he wasn’t able to set a schedule for his Horizon saga, Kevin Costner realized that “it wasn’t a trend that could continue for me” because the studios’ “big plan was to suddenly do eight now and then in the fall do eight more,” which was, unarguably, not okay.
Thus, he told them how he had “a contract to do Horizon, and I have people and money,” which eventually led to the studios proposing splitting the series’ fifth season into two parts. But then came the problem with the second half of this fifth season because “the scripts never came. They still haven’t shot it, as far as I know.”
Making it all the worse was the point where “they said to me that we don’t have an ending or anything.” Thus, he instead offered a permanent final solution for his character to Taylor Sheridan:
I said, ‘Well, if you want to kill me, if you want to do something like that,’ I said, ‘I have a week before I start. I’ll do what you want to do.’
Looking at it from his perspective, even though this would have ended up displeasing a lot of fans, it was, perhaps, the only feasible solution that could provide an accurate future for his character all the while allowing him to finally focus on his own Western Horizon saga. However, unfortunately for him, even that ended up somehow going wrong.
As Costner continued to share his views on the matter:
And somebody picked up the idea that I only wanted to work one week. And that has been a carryover thing that I have seen in magazines: that I’ve only wanted to work one week.
Needless to say, that was far from what he intended, and all he wanted to do was continue doing both the things he loved: Work on Horizon as well as Yellowstone.
That being said, when he found different stories surfacing on the internet with pretty much no one jumping to his rescue, Costner couldn’t help but admit how he felt it all to be a “big disappointment” for him.
Kevin Costner was Disappointed No One Defended Him in This Situation
Continuing during the same interview, Kevin Costner then expressed how much it disappointed him to know that no one on the other side of the road came to his defense to tell the truth he had just told when all of these stories were making rounds on the internet.
Sharing how he wished the story had been told differently publicly, he said:
My big disappointment is I never heard Paramount or 101 really come to my defense and say, ‘That’s not true. He was going to do three more seasons.’
Well, for one thing, this story is continuing to take some seriously extraordinary turns, and if what Costner has revealed is actually true, then fans just had been standing on the wrong side of the road all along.
You can stream Yellowstone on Peacock.