LONE WOLF

‘Yellowstone’ Boss Taylor Sheridan Has Emerged as a New Foe in the WGA Strike

“If I have to check in creatively with others for a story... that would probably be the end of me telling TV stories,” Sheridan said about the WGA’s minimum staffing demands.

Taylor Sheridan is a lot of things—the creator of the juggernaut Paramount+ series Yellowstone, the screenwriter of the acclaimed border thriller Sicario, and the owner of a Texas ranch that’s a quarter the size of Rhode Island. But as of this week, Sheridan has also emerged as a public enemy of striking WGA writers due to his contentious comments in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Though he claimed to THR that he broadly supports the WGA strike, the showrunner also said he disapproves of the guild’s minimum staffing demands, which includes a “minimum staff of six writers, including four Writer-Producers,” for pre-greenlight rooms. For Sheridan, a former character turned TV scribe who writes entire seasons of Yellowstone by himself, those demands don’t fit the way he prefers to run his shows.

“The freedom of the artist to create must be unfettered,” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter. “If they tell me, ‘You’re going to have to write a check for $540,000 to four people to sit in a room that you never have to meet,’ then that’s between the studio and the guild. But if I have to check in creatively with others for a story I’ve wholly built in my brain, that would probably be the end of me telling TV stories.”

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He added: “When I quit acting, I decided that I am going to tell my stories my way, period. If you don’t want me to tell them, fine. Give them back and I’ll find someone who does—or I won’t, and then I’ll read them in some freaking dinner theater. But I won’t compromise. There is no compromising.”

His comments haven’t gone over well at all with experienced television writers, many of whom have taken to Twitter to decry Sheridan’s “lone wolf” TV-making approach.

“Famous, powerful, privileged showrunner throwing other writers and the Guild under the bus in the middle of the strike is a plot twist I absolutely saw coming,” TV writer Terri Kopp tweeted.

Others criticized Sheridan’s flippancy when it comes to existing Yellowstone staffers. Asked in the same interview if every episode script starts and ends with him, Sheridan replied, “They tell me there’s a story coordinator, but I don’t know who that is.”

“Many people rightfully shitting on the Yellowstone guy but not enough people knowing what the job of script coordinator entails,” writer Danielle Weisberg tweeted, also calling attention to the fact that the proper term is “script coordinator,” not “story coordinator.” “Showrunners — your script coord wants to be a writer. The job blows. The absolute LEAST you can do is let them sit in on the room so they can learn.”

Paramount previously announced that Yellowstone will return for its final season in November, a prospect that The Hollywood Reporter deemed unlikely due to the ongoing strike. Plus, star Kevin Costner has announced he’s leaving the show, throwing yet another wrench into the proceedings.

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Helen HolmesCulture Reporter

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