Why Would Yellowstone Creator Taylor Sheridan Leave Paramount—and His Shows—Behind?
If you could interview any celebrity in the world, who would you choose? There’s plenty of more reasonable answers that I could give you before what I’m about to say. I’d love to share whisky with Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski in Japan as they work through the next John Wick film. I’d kill to paraglide with Tom Cruise—which might just get us both killed. But since I started working at Esquire three years ago, I really only have one true white whale: Taylor Sheridan.
The TV creator behind the massive Yellowstone franchise dictates most of what I write about for Esquire. Not that it was ever my intention. I wasn’t born with the yeehaw spirit—I’m from the town outside Philadelphia where M. Night Shyamalan filmed Signs—but Sheridan’s shows became impossible to ignore. The 1923 season 2 finale, the Yellowstone season 5 finale, and the Landman premiere garnered over 14 million global viewers each. To put that number in context, Succession season 4 only averaged around 8.7 million viewers per episode.
