No wonder why Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923 are so well done…
The world has been anxiously waiting for TV’s most watched show to return this November after Yellowstone went on hiatus due to a number of factors such as the writer’s strike and Kevin Costner’s contract dispute, but things in the Yellowstone ecosystem are springing back to life as tidbits of news continue to leak out about the flagship series and associated spin-offs.
Lainey Wilson said “there’s a plan” when asked if she’d be making a return, Matthew McConaughey has been rumored to be starring in a new spinoff titled 2024, and 1923 was nominated for two Golden Globes. While that doesn’t make up for being without our favorite show for over a year now, it’s good to know there’s still a lot of life left in it.
While the storylines may be what people eventually wind up falling in love with, what gets your attention right off the bat is how realistic the cowboying scenes are in every series and it turns out there’s a very good reason for that.
Creator Taylor Sheridan is a real life, full-fledged cowboy who demands the best out of his actors, so in preparation for filming, he takes them all to “Cowboy Camp”.
That’s right. He rounds up all the actors and brings them out to an actual ranch where they learn all the essentials of roping and riding, herding and sorting cattle, swimming horses, and driving wagons.
Sheridan says:
“The purpose of cowboy camp is to get actors comfortable enough on the horses that they weren’t nervous when riding.
The better I can make them as a rider, the more they understand the thing they’re acting out.”
And just like the camps you probably went to as a kid, there’s a few games along the way to keep it fun, including balancing an egg on a spoon while riding.
Sheridan is obviously quite good at all of this, but Tim McGraw, who plays the great-grandfather of John Dutton in 1883, suspects there may be some rule breaking afoot.
“I heard Taylor cheated when he does it. That he puts his thumb on the egg. Now, I’m not saying that it’s true… I’m just saying I heard that Taylor cheated.”
I’d love to be a fly on the wall for all of this, or better yet get put through camp myself. That’s mostly just an inflated sense of what I’m capable of talking, I’ve never actually ridden a horse, but I’m 100% it wouldn’t be an issue… probably… okay I probably would fail the first test, but hey, it’s all about getting back on the horse as they say, right?
Watch the behind the scenes for Yellowstone’s and 1883’s “Cowboy Camp” in the videos below.
1883
Yellowstone
