Note: This story contains spoilers from “Yellowstone” Season 5, Episode 12.
The second half of “Yellowstone’s” fifth – and final – season has played more like a thriller than earlier seasons of Taylor Sheridan’s flagship series. (The show remains the most-watched program on television.) This is perhaps to be expected, with the second half of the season opening with the shocking murder of John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and only escalating from there.
Denim Richards, who plays cowboy Colby Mayfield, met his untimely demise on this week’s episode (“Counting Coup”). Richards has been on the show since Season 1; at first he had a recurring role as one of the cow punchers on the Dutton ranch. But as the seasons went on, he became a full-fledged series regular. And he went out like a true hero — saving Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip’s (Cole Hauser) adopted son Carter (Finn Little) from an out of control horse.
TheWrap spoke to Richards about his exit and what to expect next from the performer.
How are you feeling?
I mean, I’m good. It’s the overwhelming love pouring in from our tremendous fans, which was very shocking for me. It’s been beautiful to be able to see such a visceral response. But I’m good. You take it in. You definitely take it in. You have moments. It is hard to sometimes navigate the who from the do and vice versa. But I feel pretty good.
What has this whole journey been like for you? You’re one of the original cowboys.
It’s been great. Everything good ends. Taylor and 101 [Studios, one of the production companies] and Paramount took a chance on me in 2017, 2018 — being relatively unknown — and to have the opportunity to grow in this show, throughout the seasons and throughout the years. We have navigated, with this show, so many real-life things — from COVID to the strike and always find ourselves on the other side of it. That speaks to the relentlessness and the tenacity of this great network and Taylor and 101. I think that because of that, you definitely have more of those memories of the things that you are doing in the foxhole. I feel like the audience is only really seeing like 5% of how everybody really feels, because the 95% is all this stuff happening behind the scenes. It’s been such a blessing to be a part of such an amazing show. I made so many phenomenal relationships and learned so much. I couldn’t be more thankful.
When did Taylor say, “OK, this is it?”
I found out in May. I was coming back from the US/Africa Business Summit in Dallas and I got the call. As I say all the time, as humans, we have our pride and the ego that’s like, “What?” And then, when you come out of that, the very real moment you have to … if we love what we do, we have to give ourselves that permission to feel that form of selfishness. But when you come down, you reduce all of it down to the core of what we do, our job is to service the story. That’s what we’re hired to do. We are a thread on a massive piece of tapestry.
It’s been since May, and so it’s been a little bit challenging, doing some interviews and things of that nature, where people are like, “Yeah, so Colby and Teeter, we’re going to be coming up,” and that was a little bit challenging, because I have this tendency … I’m very excited. I love talking in interviews, and I love engaging with people. This has been very hard sometimes the last couple of months where I can’t really say anything except for, just repeat what everybody else is already asking me. But that’s how it happened. The rest was history.
Taylor famously doesn’t give the actors much direction. Did he give you anything else for your big scene?
Taylor has a lot of things that are going on. Taylor has like, maybe six or seven shows that are virtually on at the same time. Part of the navigation of this show is that Taylor put together a group of actors that he doesn’t have to babysit and doesn’t have to coddle, and that’s part of what this life really is. You trust that process. And he’s trusted us with being able to kind of build these characters out where he doesn’t try to be overbearing and offer you too much about where it should be. It’s like, Look, I trust that you have the ability to do it, go and figure it out, and if it gets too far off track, then we’ll bring you in. But that’s not really his personality, to really do that. And I think that it’s a testament to the eye test that he has and the characters that he’s able to cast.
This was no different than that. This is where we are. And you take it for what it is and you take the blessing. It landed in such a beautiful way. It wasn’t like this happens and then we just dump you off a side of a cliff. There was visceral moments and emotions and this and that. You just trust that. And I think that’s part of that whole trust that you just ultimately developed with somebody Since 2017 2018 so you don’t really need the coddling in the same way, because I think that the whole show has been built off of this very strong, independent kind of ideology that then when they all kind of come together, it creates some beautiful tapestry.
What was it like actually shooting the scene?
That’s a real horse in the stall that’s massive. It’s like hitting its head on top of the thing if it bucks up, you know. But it was interesting because on the day that we’re actually going to shoot the scene, I’m going through all these personal emotions. Last time I’m going to be driving to the ranch and I get there and there’s like, lightning storms that are happening. We have a one hour delay and then a two hour delay, and then a three and then we go to a five hour delay and all of a sudden we’re actually not shooting the scene today and they’re like, “Come back in two weeks and then we’re going to shoot it.” So you’ve got to hold on to this thing for another two weeks. But then we finally did shoot it and it was just one of those things, like, when you’re actually in it, you’re just there just to do the job. You’re no longer thinking about the outcome. You just to make sure that everybody’s getting what they need. You just kind of settle in. It feels like another day at the office, until they say series wrap, and then it’s not, and then all the emotions come in, but I feel like it’s very much like an athlete, right, where there’s all the nerves before the game, but like once the game starts, you’re doing what you’ve always done. The outcome, obviously, is a little bit different, but that was definitely a day that I’ll always remember.
What did you think when you saw the final episode?
I didn’t watch it. I actually saw most of it when I went in for ADR. Because, I think, you know, yesterday [when the episode aired], I always had it on my clock. Yet, at some point I’m going to go on social media, and my social media at 4 p.m. is going to look vastly different than at 5 p.m. I just didn’t want to engage. And then I watched like a snippet of everything in its totality earlier. And I was like, Wow. It had some very beautiful moments. I saw everything that we had done in Montana with Cole and with Finn, but then to see the other end and watching all that together with them, Beth and the hat. It was just beautiful, the music, and again, in classic Taylor form, you just trust the process how he weaves everything together. That’s one of the reasons why you just don’t get too emotionally tied to, like, I need to fight for this, because you’ve just got to trust the process. It is do your job. He’ll tie it all together. And I think that we saw that again last night.
“Yellowstone” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Paramount Network.
