Taylor Sheridan felt trapped by the confines of Hollywood, so he wrote a TV series that captured that feeling… and most fans wouldn’t have ever made the connection.
In 2026, the Yellowstone creator is one of the most well known creators in entertainment. He’s quite literally a billion dollar man, and that’s thanks to the multitude of hit shows that he’s produced over the years. Landman, The Madison, Lioness… you name it. They are all from the mind of Sheridan, and it’s crazy to think that it wasn’t that long ago when Taylor was struggling in the industry.
That’s because he was first trying to make it as an actor. He had a couple of bigger roles here and there (most notably in Sons of Anarchy), but he couldn’t ever get anything in his acting career to stick, and was becoming frustrated with Hollywood. So he pivoted to writing, and as he told The Hollywood Reporter a couple of years ago, he almost immediately found success:
“Hollywood will tell you what you’re supposed to do if you listen. If you’re banging your head against the wall for 20 years trying to be an actor, maybe you shouldn’t be an actor. But the first thing I ever wrote (Mayor of Kingstown’s pilot) got me meetings at every major network, at every agency. I had multiple people trying to buy it.”
Yeah, Mayor of Kingstown was actually the first thing he ever wrote.
If you’re not familiar with the series, Mayor of Kingstown stars Jeremy Renner as Mike McLusky, and follows the McLusky family in Kingstown, Michigan – a city where prison is the only real industry. Acting as the mediators between the street gangs, prisoners, guards, cops and politicians, the McLusky family battles to keep the peace in Kingstown, and has done so for decades.
Interestingly, in a recent interview with Town & Country, Sheridan revealed that the first ever pilot that he crafted was basically autobiographical. If you watch Mayor of Kingstown, Mike McLusky feels trapped in Kingstown. Sheridan felt very much the same about Los Angeles:
“Here’s a guy in a place that he hates, attempting to hold this place together instead of leaving. That, to me, was pretty autobiographical, because there I was stuck in L.A. That’s what that was.”
In other words, it was very therapeutic to write that story… and obviously, that was the big break Sheridan was looking for to get out of California.
Once he had enough money, and plenty of wind in his sails, he relocated to Texas and basically built out his own Hollywood. The Fort Worth area has become his base camp, and in that same interview with THR, Sheridan says that moving to Texas was one of the best things he’s ever done for his career:
“When I lived in Los Angeles, everything I saw was the same and I didn’t learn anything in my day-to-day life. Here, I get to experience so much. I heard 25 iconic pieces of dialogue today. Most of my great lines I heard someone else say, or some version of it. I’m banking story all the time.”
And banking great story at that… like Mayor of Kingstown, which is set to return for its fifth and final season sometime later this year.
