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Actor Ed Harris voiced his frustration over his role as Everett McKinney on the "Yellowstone" spinoff "Dutton Ranch," revealing he tried to exit the series midway through production after feeling "misled" about his prominence in the story.
In an unfiltered interview with Variety at the Los Angeles premiere of "Dink," the 75-year-old Oscar nominee explained why he asked his team to "get him the f*** out of" the show during Season 1.
“Prior to signing on for it, I was talked to quite a bit about what the season was and what my character was going to do — and that I was one of the four main characters,” Harris claimed. “And that wasn’t really the case.”
The Emmy and Golden Globe winner said his concerns about feeling "inconsequential" were shrugged off by production.
Although Harris acknowledged that McKinney ended up being “relatively important to the story” in a “pretty good” first season, he maintained that it “didn’t feel that way” while filming.
The primary catalyst for his frustration involved a promised performance sequence that was eliminated from the final cut.
“They didn’t show it. They said it was too up for the dark ending of that episode,” Harris said regarding the cut scene. “That, to me, was reason enough to say, ‘I’m voiding my contract.’ I [was like], ‘F*** you people,’ That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Despite the friction, Harris remains under contract for Season 2, which begins filming next year.
He noted he is currently "being told [his] character will have a little bit more to do" moving forward.
Harris commented amidst ongoing drama at Paramount and Sheridan's production company.
Sheridan recently criticized studio executives on a June episode of the "Bill Simmons Podcast," stating, “It didn’t used to be this way [in the industry] because writers were turned loose.
"Directors were turned completely loose. There weren’t endless rewrites. There weren’t meetings with executives about tone and mood and all this nonsense.”
According to a Wall Street Journal report, friction escalated between Sheridan, who signed a deal with NBCUniversal last year, and Paramount’s new CEO David Ellison following the company's merger with Skydance Media.
Disagreements reportedly included budget disputes over "Special Ops: Lioness," a rejected film script, and Paramount’s casting of Nicole Kidman in the series "Discretion" without consulting Sheridan, which created potential scheduling conflicts for "Lioness" and was viewed by the showrunner as "a lack of respect."
Additionally, Sheridan pushed back against an Ellison proposal for a politically themed series tied to America's 250th anniversary.
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