The new King Midas of television is a cowboy who lives on a ranch

The Dutton Ranch came back to life on November 14: Yellowstone, a series full of characters who will do whatever it takes to maintain their territory, no matter if that means threatening, conspiring, torturing, or killing (or “taking to the train station,” the euphemism they use). Behind Yellowstone is one of the great protagonists of the fall series schedule, Taylor Sheridan. In November alone, episodes of three series created by Sheridan have premiered: Lioness, a series about the military and terrorism with Zoe Saldaña, Michael Kelly and Nicole Kidman; the second part of the fifth season of Yellowstone, and Landman, a show based on oilmen with Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm.

In September, the second season of Tulsa King premiered, also created by Sheridan and starring Sylvester Stallone as a New York mob boss. And in the summer, the third season of Mayor of Kingstown was released, in which Jeremy Renner is responsible for mediating between gangs, prisoners, guards, and police in a city whose main business is the jail. Sheridan’s television universe doesn’t stop there, and in recent years he has also been responsible for two prequels to Yellowstone: 1883 (with Sam Elliott) and 1923 (with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren). In addition, he is the producer of Lawmen: Bass Reeves, a series that follows law enforcement officers and outlaws who have gone down in history in each season. They are all available on SkyShowtime.

But who is Taylor Sheridan, the creator of this television universe that exudes testosterone from every pore? Sheridan maintains the mystery around himself fairly well and gives few interviews. His real name is Sheridan Taylor Gibler Jr., a screenwriter, producer, director, and actor born in North Carolina and raised in Texas. As a child he lived closely linked to ranches and learned the life of a cowboy.

For a time he made a living cutting grass and painting houses in Austin. While looking for work in a shopping center, a talent scout offered him a trip to Chicago to try his luck as an actor. That’s how he entered the world of show business. His first major role was in Veronica Mars, and in Sons of Anarchy he played police officer David Hale.

In his spare time he began writing scripts and when he sold the first one (the pilot for Mayor of Kingstown, although in the end he preferred to put it back in the drawer for later) he had just $800 left in the bank. He wrote the script for the film Sicario (2015), directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Benicio del Toro. He then wrote Hell or High Water (2016), with Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay. His third film was Wind River (2017), with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, which he also directed.

But it was television that gave him his greatest success. He applied the saying “write what you know” and his experiences on his family’s ranches served as inspiration for Yellowstone. The cowboy soul is so deep in him that at the beginning of 2022, he led a consortium that bought the legendary 6666 ranch, valued at around $350 million and with a total area close to that of Los Angeles, and moved there with his wife and son. To understand how someone can afford to buy a ranch for that kind of money, you have to go back to Yellowstone. This addictive mix of family drama, modern western, and crime and political plot has been the most-watched series on U.S. television for several years. On Paramount Network, where it premiered in 2018, it gained popularity and its inclusion on the Peacock platform led its viewing numbers to rise. It has even been broadcast (in a censored version) on CBS.

It is, in short, one of the most successful and popular series in the United States. Its enormous success led to the renewal of its contract with ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) in 2021 for a dizzying sum (an estimated $200 million) for the production of multiple projects. After all, you could say that its entire streaming service is based on the stories that come out of Sheridan’s head. That agreement allowed him to buy his long-awaited ranch. “I was real rich for 45 minutes. Then I was broke again,” he said last year in one of the few recent in-depth interviews he has given, in The Hollywood Reporter.

It is not unusual to read stories about behind-the-scenes conflicts on his series. The most famous is the one that led to the departure of Kevin Costner, star of Yellowstone, from the episodes that are currently being broadcast. The official version is that the actor was dedicated to his film project Horizon and could not combine the two due to scheduling issues. According to Sheridan, it was increasingly difficult to fit in the shooting schedule that the actor requested, and the conflict grew, until lawyers got involved and everything became tangled up.

Two other Sheridan series, Tulsa King and Lioness, have undergone changes in the people at the helm. In The Hollywood Reporter, he explained that his plan in creating so many series in such a short time was to “Greg Berlanti it,” referring to another of the most prolific producers in American television: start the project, write the pilot, direct it, and then hand the series over to a showrunner and other writers to carry on. However, he was unhappy with the writing in Tulsa King (even though it was written by the renowned Sopranos writer and Boardwalk Empire showrunner Terence Winter) and Lioness, so he opted to write everything himself, just as he has done with Yellowstone and its spin-offs. He has also been at the center of controversy for charging the production company tens of thousands of dollars extra for the use of his own land and horses for the series.

As for his personality, in The Hollywood Reporter interview, the journalist recalled a description of him by Elizabeth Olsen: “A cowboy who’s like a combination of your dad and the Marlboro Man.” The article also highlights that Sheridan’s personality is in line with that of his protagonists, men who are bosses with clear ideas, accustomed to being obeyed without question and who take tooth and nail care of their family and closest friends. Ideologically, he positions himself above all as an advocate for the environment, and although he does not express himself on the matter, it would not be difficult to imagine his characters voting for Donald Trump. In another interview in The Atlantic in 2022, Sheridan laughed when he was told that Yellowstone was a series admired by conservative voters of the Republican Party. “I’m like, ‘Really?’ The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?”

With the future of Yellowstone still undefined (until recently, the six episodes currently airing were announced as the last in the series, but it could continue with the characters of Beth and Rip as protagonists), Sheridan already has several more projects in the pipeline to continue telling cowboy stories. One is The Madison, with Michelle Pfeiffer leading a cast that includes Matthew Fox and Patrick J. Adams and which will follow a family that, after a tragedy, moves from New York to Montana. And, although the project is still a bit vague, another of the series announced is 6666, which will be filmed on the ranch that gives it its name and is now owned by Sheridan, and will tell the history of the place.

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