Yellowstone’s Luke Grimes reveals why he had a “hard time” on Season 5 Part 2 set

Returning to the Yellowstone set without Kevin Costner was no doubt a challenge for the rest of the cast, but this, plus a two-year gap between seasons, meant Luke Grimes found it tricky to fall back into character at first.

The last Yellowstone episode aired in January 2023, meaning it’s been almost two years since the Western drama was on screens. That’s even longer for the Yellowstone cast, who returned to the Dutton ranch earlier this year to film the final six episodes of the show.

Luke Grimes, who plays Kayce Dutton in the Taylor Sheridan series, revealed how it felt to step back into those cowboy boots after such a lengthy gap. Needless to say, it wasn’t easy.

“I was having a really hard time locking back in,” he said [via Variety]. “I’ve been playing this guy for a long time, but a two-year break… It’s hard to find the nuance again.”

As he described, it was reading the script for the final episode that helped him find Kayce once again.

“Part of the way I did it was I waited until the last minute to read the last episode,” he explained. “I had a feeling that was going to be what hooked me back in, and it worked — I read the final episode, and I was a mess. But then I felt like, ‘I remember who he is now!'”

It’s not just his own absence Grimes had to deal with. Kevin Costner‘s exit from the show became the defining talking point of the newest installment and later led to the early conclusion of the show altogether.

Paramount

When it came to returning to set without Costner in the lead, Grimes said [via People]: “Him not coming back felt like, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to land this plane now for real.’

“I think the patriarch leaving was always going to be part of the story. That’s always where it was headed is like, what do these kids do? What does this family do when their rock is gone?

“Whatever the circumstances may be, [it] definitely felt like, ‘Okay, we’re coming in for a landing’. It definitely felt different.”

Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 returns on November 10 on the Paramount Network.