Taylor Sheridan’s third season of Lioness is under way, another entry in a catalog that already includes Yellowstone, 1923, Landman, The Madison and a stack of related hits. Audiences know the hallmarks: land, power, family, violence, and dialogue that sounds like it was carved rather than typed. The people who have to say those words for a living have been unusually consistent about what the job feels like—demanding, precise, and, for many of them, career-defining.
“One of the greatest storytellers” — and “put me in, coach”
Ahead of Lioness Season 3, Michael Kelly told People that Sheridan is “truly a standalone talent.” “There’s nobody who’s doing or has ever done what he’s doing,” Kelly said. “It’s incredible what he does. And he’s just one of the smartest dudes you’ll ever meet.” He went further: “He’s f***ing brilliant, man. Brilliant. And just one of the greatest storytellers.”
Kelly has not spent much time inventing crossover fantasies, but he has made his availability clear. He told Sheridan he loves being in Texas and loves saying his words—“Anything, dude. You can put me in. Put me in, coach. Wherever you want to put me, I’ll go.” That is the recurring posture among Sheridan regulars: not vague admiration, but a willingness to re-enlist on short notice.
Zoe Saldaña: raise the bar or quit
Zoe Saldaña, who has led Lioness across three seasons, described a different temperature on set. To CBS Mornings she said she can “feel like an old soldier,” yet when Sheridan shows he believes in her, “you have no other choice but to start believing in yourself again.” She also called him “an intimidating cat” who arrives ready and “so serious,” which “raises the bar for the rest of us.”
To People she sharpened the choice: working with him is a challenge because he lifts the standard. “You either accept the challenge and make sure that you don’t f*** up… or you quit.” The upside, in her account, is intellectual and vocational. He researches heavily, builds elaborate shows that “end up really educating us,” and—when you are inside the process—reveals how passionate he is about actors and acting. “I think it is his first love when it comes to the arts.”
Billy Bob Thornton: trust the scripts, stay after hours
At a Hollywood Q&A in April, Landman star Billy Bob Thornton kept it simple. He trusts Sheridan and he trusts his castmates. “Yeah, oh, it’s great. I love working with Taylor,” he said. “I love hanging out with him after hours. He’s such a brilliant guy, great writer, and I love his company.” For a star with decades of selective projects, “I trust the show” is high praise dressed as understatement.
Michelle Pfeiffer: when Helen Mirren glows, you leap
Michelle Pfeiffer did not stumble into The Madison. She and Sheridan negotiated identity—he wanted to know who Stacy was before he wrote; she wanted to know who Stacy was before she signed. “It became clear to me I wasn’t going to win this battle,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. So she called Helen Mirren, who had already lived inside Sheridan’s 1923.
Mirren, Pfeiffer recalled, “just glowed; she couldn’t say enough nice things.” Scripts were great, productions tight, Montana a joy. Pfeiffer took “a big leap of faith” on the back of that testimony and Sheridan’s track record. The anecdote doubles as a recruitment loop: one generation of Sheridan casting sells the next.
Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren: precision without labor
At the 1923 premiere in December 2022, Harrison Ford stacked unexpected traits on the same résumé. “He’s an incredible horseman. He’s a genuine athlete, and that’s something you might not expect to find in such a talented writer and intellectual thinker,” he told THR.
Mirren, same night, called Sheridan “fabulously hands-off.” “He presents the script, and it’s so extraordinary that you don’t want to change a word. You want to do it exactly as it’s written because it’s written with incredible precision but without being labored.” For her, joining a franchise that felt singular on American television was the point: “There’s nothing else quite like it.”
Kevin Costner: shared subjects, open door—then a hard exit
Before Horizon: An American Saga landed in 2024, and while his Yellowstone future was already unstable, Kevin Costner told Entertainment Weekly that Sheridan is “doing special work in a lot of different ways.” He is prolific; if Sheridan sees Costner in something, Costner will look—the same way he looked at Yellowstone. “He likes a lot of the things that I like, and the idea of us working together is not out of the question for me.”
That goodwill did not keep Costner through the end of Yellowstone Season 5. He did not return to finish the run; the universe continued without him through Dutton Ranch, following Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly’s characters into a Texas chapter. The public record thus holds both truths: artistic respect, and a collaboration that still broke on logistics and schedule.
Casting the unknowns: Geraghty and Randolph
Brian Geraghty (1923) expected a different man than the one he met. Sheridan’s years as an actor, Geraghty told THR, show up as empathy under the “tough cowboy” surface—and as a willingness to hire younger players over safer big names. “I love that because we all need that break.” He also praised casting that ignores résumé gravity: “He casts the people who are right for the role.” On set, “everyone raises the bar. He creates that, and it starts from him, but he also is very welcoming and gives you the tools you need to get there.”
Michelle Randolph (1923, Landman) has said the same in personal terms. Speaking to People in 2025, she called Sheridan “one of the few people” who “takes chances on actors.” “He made my dreams come true. I tell him that every time I see him.” As a writer, she told THR, he gives characters “such depth and such unique storylines” even when many plots run at once—an unusually hard trick at his volume of series.
Kurt Russell: not Yellowstone, and maybe his best pages
At The Madison premiere in March, Kurt Russell went out of his way to separate the new show from the ranch mythos. “I love his writing. I think this is his best writing. I love that this is not Yellowstone. It’s not that. It’s very standalone, very different.” He highlighted the relationships Sheridan digs into and called the project “truly a different wheelhouse.” For a star of Russell’s generation, “best writing” is not a throwaway line.
Ali Larter: texts when he laughs at his own pages
Ali Larter’s Landman experience sounds almost domestic in its intensity. She told People that Sheridan sometimes texts while writing—“if he’s laughing at his own writing… I’ll get a text.” Season one meant heavy time with a creator who has “a very clear vision” and who already knows, on the page, how he will cut the scene. Actors want to advocate for their characters; Sheridan, in her view, is “brilliant” at building a world where that advocacy still serves the story he is telling.
To Taste of Country she called him “the best working writer,” dynamic and powerful on the page, yet willing to show vulnerability. To THR in June she added the industrial frame: they had known each other years earlier, fallen out of touch, then reconvened on Landman. She does not see him submitting to a machine built to sand him down. “He’s an extraordinarily hard worker. He’s a brilliant talent. He wants to do it his way.”
The composite portrait
Across Lioness, Landman, 1923, The Madison and the long shadow of Yellowstone, Sheridan’s highest-profile collaborators describe the same cluster of traits:
| Theme | How stars phrase it |
|---|---|
| Writing | Precise, deep, sometimes “best” work; characters distinct at high volume |
| Set standard | Bar rises; seriousness is contagious; don’t mess up or leave |
| Trust | Thornton’s trust in show and cast; Pfeiffer’s leap after Mirren |
| Hands-off precision | Mirren: change nothing because the page is already right |
| Casting | Breaks for the right face over the famous one |
| Work style | Athlete-horseman-intellectual; texts; edits in his head while writing |
| Loyalty loop | Kelly’s “put me in”; Randolph’s lifelong thank-you |
None of that erases scheduling wars, franchise fatigue, or the cost of a single writer-producer operating at industrial scale. Costner’s unfinished Yellowstone chapter sits in the same file as Mirren’s glowing referral. What the testimony shares is rare for a showrunner with this much product on the air: the people inside the machine keep saying the words are the reason they stayed—and, often, the reason they would go again.
