Yellowstone actor Neal McDonough said he was rejected by Hollywood for his refusal to kiss other women on screen.
McDonough, 60, revealed to Fox News Digital that he was once fired from a show for not kissing another actor.
“You know, I was fired from a show because I wouldn’t kiss a woman,” the actor said in a new interview. “No one would hire me because they thought I was this religious nut bag, which is that I love my wife so much. And no one can understand it, no one could understand it.”
The Suits star has opened up about the incident in the past. In 2019, he similarly told Fox that he was replaced on the ABC series Scoundrels for refusing sex scenes with his co-star, Virginia Madsen. ABC refuted the claim, saying it was simply a casting change.
McDonough has been married to model Ruvé Robertson since 2003. A devout Catholic, the actor has previously stated, “I’d always had in my contracts I wouldn’t kiss another woman on-screen.”
“My wife didn’t have any problem with it. It was me, really, who had a problem with it. When I couldn’t do it, and they couldn’t understand it, Hollywood just completely turned on me. They wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore,” he said on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast last July.
The actor starred in Marc Cherry’s often racy ABC drama, Desperate Housewives, from 2006 to 2009, where he also stuck to his philosophy. In the show, he played husband to actress Nicollette Sheridan.
“When Marc Cherry signed me, I said, ‘I’m sure you know, but I won’t kiss anybody,’” McDonough told Closer Weekly. “He was like, ‘But this is Desperate Housewives!’ I said, ‘I know.’ He paused for about five seconds and said, ‘All right, I’m just going to have to write better.’ And we had a great time.”
Speaking to Fox in the new interview, McDonough also opened up about his bout with alcoholism, saying he was “always a drinker.” He said it became a “problem” for about four years. “I lost the house, lost the cars, lost everything,” he said.
“I failed Ruve, my five kids... I lost our house. I lost all the beautiful things that were the shiny widgets that I had accumulated, were all taken away from me. And that crucifixion caused me so much inner pain because I made it all about me. How could I let the team down?”
The actor credits his wife for helping him out of it. “She grabbed me and says, it’s us or the bottle, you choose,” and added, he has “never looked back.”
“It’s just a cold, hard fact that God gave me an amazing, incredible, most amazing woman that I’ve ever met,” he said. “I can talk forever about it, but she’s my good luck charm, and she got me through hell, and now here I am, in a fantastic place in life that we’re producing movies together. And I can’t tell you how amazing that feels.”
The actor shared that his friend, the late Luke Perry, helped him through his dark times, too. Perry offered McDonough and his family a home to stay in when the actor was facing a crossroads in his career.
McDonough, a Republican, attended President Trump’s Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony in December 2025.
The actor is appearing in the upcoming James Stewart biopic, which also stars Riverdale actor KJ Apa. Jimmy is set to be released in November 2026.
