Prolific TV creator Taylor Sheridan goes off the rails and slams critics and Hollywood executives in a new, candid interview.
“The critics are going to come after me… I can’t write for women, all this nonsense,” the “Yellowstone” creator said during a guest appearance on the “Bill Simmons Podcast.”
“I don’t care what the critics think, I don’t care what they think. And what I don’t care about is pissing them off. Let me start by saying that there are things I do that piss them off a little bit, and this is one of them. Fuck you, honestly.”
Sheridan, 56, has built an empire of shows over the years featuring A-list stars such as Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Helen Mirren, Demi Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell.
The “Landman” screenwriter, who reportedly clashed with Paramount’s leadership before leaving the studio and signing with NBCUniversal, has not shied away from candid interviews, taking aim at Hollywood executives who have criticized his creative process.
“Studio executives and network executives, by the way, are mostly marketing executives. Or maybe they studied law or something. Then they came and got a job in the mailroom at CAA or WME, and they hated that crap. So they ended up working as interns at some network,” he claimed.
“And then, through attrition, they find themselves in charge of development. So what do you know about story development? You know nothing. So they panic, afraid that the audience won’t understand because they don’t actually have a storyteller.”
The “Mayor of Kingstown” creator went on to reminisce about the good old days “when Steve McQueen was a movie star at Paramount and Bobby Evans ran the studio.”
“This never happened before…because the writers were free. The directors were completely free,” he recalled. “There were no endless rewrites. There were no meetings with executives about tone and atmosphere and all that nonsense.”
Sheridan’s show has been largely shut out of the Emmys and Golden Globes, with the exception of “Yellowstone” star Costner winning a Golden Globe for his role as John Dutton in 2023, but he explained on the podcast that taking home a trophy was never his goal.
“Not that you can’t win an Emmy with me, but I’m not trying to win an Emmy,” Sheridan said. “My goal is to put someone on the couch, move someone, make them think, make them laugh, scare them, get them excited. That’s what I want to do, because that’s what I want from the show.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Sheridan, who lives on a ranch in Texas with his wife, actress Nicole Muirbrook, and their 16-year-old son, Gus, also declared he would never return to Hollywood, despite it being a major hub for film and television production.
“The only way to get me back to Los Angeles is for the union to secede from the union and for me to be drafted into the military and bring the union back,” he said bluntly, then praised the Big Apple.
“I love New York. The way that city works is much stronger than any political wind blowing in any direction, right? Los Angeles, on the other hand, is built on sand.”
