It’s been announced that Matthew McConaughey will be starring in a Yellowstone spinoff, and we now have some comments directly from the actor himself regarding what he’ll bring to the franchise. Ahead of the big news being shared, McConaughey made an appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast to discuss his non-fiction book Greenlights. While chatting with the hosts, McConaughey got around to mentioning future projects and revealed that he had something on the horizon which can be safely assumed is his new Yellowstone series.
“I am now becoming more interested in actually going to play another character in a TV show. To go have some structure, like, ‘I got a call time. I got lines. I got scenes. I got a character.’ That sounds like a vacation right now to me,” The actor quipped. He added, “All the last four years of culminating and writing and getting these things together and getting more into some public service freed me up to go, ‘The idea of going to act in the right role, in the right kind of movie, film, or series right now, I’ll be a different or improved actor in my own right,” after this last three years. I deliberately chose to go focus on some things I was talking about and I have different perspectives.”
Prior to the news being official, there were only rumors that McConaughey was in talks to lead a Yellowstone spinoff, but those rumors generated quite a lot of interest from fans. In a conversation with Vulture — at the time — CEO of Paramount Media Networks Chris McCarthy addressed rumblings around about “the much-discussed franchise.” After being asked about the authenticity of the reports, McCarthy replied, “There’s a bunch of different ways we could take the story.”
He continued, “Thankfully, Taylor’s mind and his creativity is endless. So, while we’re not ready to commit and comment on it, as anyone who’s watched the most recent season, you see Jimmy go to the Four Sixes pretty often. You also see flashbacks to when these particular Duttons are younger, with Beth being in her teenage years, and you could easily see there being a story coming into that which fits very complimentary into the present day.”
McCarthy added, “With Taylor, creativity is endless, and we’re thinking through all of those different options and excited about many of them. And I will say, we love Matthew McConaughey. We’ve always been big fans of his.”
He then offered, “We’d love for the opportunity to work together, and it really speaks to the quality and type of talent that Taylor brings out, from Harrison Ford to Helen Mirren to Jeremy Renner and David Oyelowo, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw and Sylvester Stallone. These are the who’s who of Hollywood and I think that really speaks to the quality and caliber of the programming that Taylor brings. We’re not trying to do the volume that other players are doing, but what we are trying to do is big cinematic hits that are popular and commercial and get people coming back more and more.”