Luke Grimes will forever be grateful that he got an opportunity to play Kayce Dutton.
The actor first appeared as the character in the flagship series Yellowstone in 2018, which ended up being a massive hit and confirmed Taylor Sheridan as one of the greatest minds in the industry. Almost a decade later, Grimes is still playing Kayce Dutton, and now it’s in a completely different show.
The beloved supporting character is now the main character of the latest Yellowstone spinoff known as Marshals. He and his wife, Monica (played by Kelsey Asbille), got a feel-good, happily-ever-after ending when Yellowstone concluded. That’s all been unraveled by the CBS procedural drama Marshals.
The show sees Luke Grimes reprise his role, and navigates the complex life of Kayce Dutton as he faces tragedy in his personal life (the loss of his wife, Monica) and finds himself working as a U.S. Marshal. The reviews for the show have been mixed, and it’s definitely a different feel than the flagship series. That being said, Marshals has put up monster numbers, and has already been picked up for a second season.
Grimes has previously said he wants to play Kayce as long as possible, and he gave more insight into that desire during a recent interview with Radio Times:
“I mean, I’ve signed a contract, so I have to do it as long as people kind of watch it for the next, however, many years. But if there was ever a character that I was going to play for 10 years or more, this is the one.”
And to be clear, Luke Grimes would happily play Kayce for a decade or longer.
That’s because he recognized how great of a role it was as soon as he saw it. Back in 2017, when Grimes first saw a script for Yellowstone, and had yet to secure the part, he knew it was the part of a lifetime. Now that he’s settled into it, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else:
“When I read the script in 2017 for the first time, I remember thinking, ‘If I don’t get to play this guy it’s going to be the one that got away. It’ll be the biggest heartbreak of my career. I’ll think about this for the rest of my life.’ So the fact that I got it was a dream come true. It’s very easy for me not to take it for granted, because I do love playing this guy.
Obviously there are times when I think about it all at once, and I think, ‘Oh, my God, how many more years? And this is crazy, and this is a lot of work.’ But then I remember this is Kayce, so I’m good. I get to be in this beautiful place in the mountains, and it’s just awesome. It’s all the things I wanted to play as a young actor and as a boy, all rolled into one.”
In other words, Luke Grimes is living the dream, and he’ll keep showing up to play a member of the Dutton family for as long as he’s able to.
He at least knows he’s got another season worth of Kayce Dutton, since the show was renewed for Season 2. Outside of that, he’s not familiar with where his show and other Yellowstone spinoffs might end up. Grimes says he only knows more than the public when he stops by Taylor Sheridan’s house:
“The only time I find out anything is if I happen to be at Taylor’s house, because he likes to use speakerphone so sometimes I’ll get it straight from the source.”
Unfortunately, Luke Grimes didn’t have any breaking news fed to him from a recent Sheridan-speaker-phone session. But it sounds like the Yellowstone creator might want to be more careful with how he handles his phone calls when guests are over.
