Kevin Costner reveals who he blames for Yellowstone chaos — and it’s not Taylor Sheridan

While promoting Horizon: An American Saga, Kevin Costner has cleared up some of the Yellowstone drama, namely putting the blame on one particular source.

Rumors of a feud between Costner and Taylor Sheridan, Yellowstone’s creator, have been swirling around since the actor’s unexpected exit. However, Costner’s latest comments on the subject (via Deadline) suggest there’s no truth to that speculation.

As the ex-Yellowstone cast lead puts it, those behind Yellowstone “just kept moving their gaps.” While Sheridan is the brains behind Yellowstone, Paramount and 101 Studios are responsible for bringing the show to life, and according to Costner, he’s “taken a beating from those f**king guys.

“I know a lot of times where it’s coming from,” he added. “… If you know me well enough, I made Yellowstone the first priority, and to insinuate anything else would be wrong. I did not initiate any of those things. They did. They were doing a tap dance and this poor guy [Taylor Sheridan] was also having to write so much. And I don’t know why they didn’t stick up for me.”

“I didn’t have to answer the slings and arrows over the last year and a half, because I’ve just been busy working. They’ve been pretty slick about keeping their hands off; nobody was ever on the record.”

Costner maintains that, despite popular belief, his Horizon schedule was not the reason for him leaving the Western TV show. He’s firm in saying that he made himself available, but that constantly-changing schedules and a lack of scripts was the problem.

He also makes it clear that he believes the powers that be have been spinning various facts. After telling them that he was able to give them a week while in the midst of Horizon: An American Saga, he says: “They [spun that] into, I only wanted to work a week… they took that and a source on their side spun that into, well, he only wants to work a week for a whole season.”

While Costner is aware of Sheridan and Paramount’s efforts to expand the Dutton family’s story into a fully-realized small screen universe with multiple Yellowstone spinoffs, he says that he was still bothered by their methods.

“That is fine, but they were silent and that bothered me in the world of how you do things,” he says. “Why don’t you stick up for me? It all happened because they shut down one whole season, didn’t tell anybody and I didn’t work for 14 months.”

When it comes to Sheridan, Costner reveals that while the two had a “man-to-man”, the creator “said what we would do and I believed him and we didn’t get there.”

“It’s just that simple: Paramount and 101 Studios mismanaged this,” he sums up. “They had me for five, six, and seven. I agreed to do it. And then they steadily began changing their format.”

For more, find out how to watch all the Kevin Costner Westerns. Or, see why we think Kevin Costner will either save the Western or kill them off entirely.