'Yellowstone' Star Luke Grimes: 'The Show Rolled With the Punches'

2 months ago 13

Yellowstone fans will have mixed emotions about the highly anticipated series finale following the departure of lead actor Kevin Costner, but co-star Luke Grimes believes the show's creators have come up with the perfect ending.

The television hit, which has aired since 2018, is based around a working cattle ranch in Montana and follows the Dutton family's ongoing struggle to protect their land.

Season 5, Part 1 ran from November 2022 to January 2023. Amid reported creative disputes between co-creator Taylor Sheridan and Costner, followed by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, it was later announced that Part 2 (airing from November 10) would be Yellowstone's last outing.

As the final episodes draw nearer, Grimes—who plays Kayce Dutton, the youngest child of John Dutton (Costner)—said fans won't be able to predict the ending. "I think true to Yellowstone's form, [viewers] won't be able to see it coming. I feel like that's the kind of beauty of Taylor's writing and it's always so surprising. It's never what you thought it was going to be," he told Newsweek.

"But I think everyone will be really satisfied.... If I would have tried to come up with an ending, I never would have come up with this one, but it's the perfect one. Because I'm clearly not a writer and even if I was, it would not be as good as Taylor['s].

"I think it'll just be very satisfying because...that's what you want. And the ending of a great show is something unpredictable and satisfying."

Part 1 saw John become governor of Montana, using his political power to protect the family's ranch from corporate and environmental threats. However, tensions within the family reached a boiling point when Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) made a bold move by publicly calling for his father's impeachment. Meanwhile, John's daughter Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) uncovered the scheme and began plotting her own brutal counterstrike.

Armed with knowledge of Jamie's role in the murder of his biological father, Garrett Randall (Will Patton), Beth hinted at using this information to destroy her brother. At the same time, their sibling Kayce wrestled with personal struggles away from the ranch.

With these intense personal and political conflicts left hanging in the balance, fans are wondering how the family feud will play out, especially with Costner no longer on the show.

Following his departure, the actor directed, produced and co-wrote four-part movie project Horizon: An American Saga. Chapter 1 hit theaters on June 28 this year, with Chapter 2 following on September 7.

The project was reportedly linked to a dispute between Costner and Sheridan, and many believed it played a role in Yellowstone's sudden end.

"I just feel like it would be unfair of me to kind of talk about any of that because, you know, [the show] was seven years long and there's so many things that happened that I know about and so many things that happened that I don't know about," Grimes said of Costner's absence.

"I don't have the bird's-eye view of that whole situation, you know? All I know is what happened, happened, and the show rolled with the punches.

"We were able to finish the show and finish it in a way that I think is really gonna work for everybody, even in the midst of all that."

What's more, through filming the series, Grimes fell in love with Montana—so much so that he and his wife decided to leave Los Angeles for the landlocked state. "I was living in L.A. when I started coming up here for work and L.A. never really felt like home to me, although it was great to me and I have no complaints," he said. "It just never felt like my home, it felt like the office; it felt like where I had to drum up some work. I spoke to my wife [model Bianca Rodrigues Grimes] and she agreed, she felt the same way—she had moved there for work as well.

"We started talking about where we might want to raise a family and Montana wasn't one of the first things that came up, it just happened really organically. We just kind of looked around and traveled around.

"I remember I would go back and forth between where I live now and L.A. and at a certain point, it didn't feel like I was going home. It felt like I was leaving home and I felt like there was just a calling here.

"And I know that sounds a little kind of hippie-dippy, but it really did start to feel like I'm supposed to be here. She felt the same way. We finally just started looking for a place and we built a home and it worked 'cause we do feel like we're home now."

Life Without 'Yellowstone'

Before landing the role of Kayce Dutton, Grimes had a brief stint in the TV series True Blood (2013) as vampire James, then appeared as Navy SEAL Marc Alan Lee in the biographical war movie American Sniper (2014). A year later, he landed the part of Elliot Grey, Christian's younger brother, in the Fifty Shades of Grey film franchise.

Grimes most recently starred in Netflix rom-com Happiness for Beginners alongside Ellie Kemper.

But it is country music, among other projects, that is keeping Grimes busy now that Yellowstone is over. In March, he released his self-titled debut album, Luke Grimes, and in November he is embarking on his Playin' On The Tracks Tour, performing in cities including New York, Nashville and Los Angeles.

"We're going on a tour this fall, so I'm going to be hitting some cities ... that I haven't been to yet. And then currently writing another album, and we should have that done next year," Grimes said. "So yeah, plenty to look forward to. I just feel lucky to be able to do anything musically. It's not something that I really ever saw coming and I've just been lucky enough to sort of enjoy this process and I hope I get to do it for a very long time."

Talking about his songwriting inspirations, he said: "Like any artist in any form, I'm just sort of inspired by my experiences and my life. I'm lucky enough that those experiences have been very broad and spanned a lot of different cultures ... social constructs and economic constructs.

"I have been all over the place—I've gotten to travel the world, I've gotten to play a lot of different characters and live in a lot of different places and so I draw from all of that. I feel very lucky to have had such an interesting life so far that I get to sort of talk about in the songs."

Country music was one of 2023's fastest-growing streaming genres in the U.S., according to industry data firm Luminate, with on-demand audio streams exceeding 20 billion—a 23.7 percent increase on the previous year.

This year it's had a huge resurgence, with Beyoncé releasing country album Cowboy Carter, songs from the genre regularly going viral on TikTok, and country and folk artists like Noah Kahan, Lainey Wilson—whose acting debut was in Yellowstone—and Zach Bryan filling up the charts.

"I think country music has always been about the song and been about humans writing lyrics, playing music on instruments and just bringing it back to that simple core of what Americana music really is. I think people are just craving that right now because for a while they weren't getting it," Grimes said.

"One of my favorite things about country is it allows itself to be indulgent in the emotional life, you can indulge in sadness or joy or family. It's about the human experience without going into the abstract—it's about the fact of the matter of life."

Grimes may need country music to indulge in emotions provoked by the ending of Yellowstone. He said the show was "not at all" easy to say goodbye to.

"You know, I finished shooting over a month ago and it's still, I'm still sort of processing all of that and I still have moments of the day where, you know, it feels very heavy and very big that that's over and that chapter of my life is over, because it was a huge part of my life," Grimes said.

"I played that character for seven years, since 2017. And, you know, my castmates and the crew became like another family. And there are people that will stay in my life and I'll see them from time to time, but just in the capacity that we were making something together that we all believed in, that was so good and we were somewhere beautiful.

"It was such a special project and I doubt it will ever be topped in my life."

He added of his character: "I really fell in love with Kayce over the years, and...I feel like, as an actor, you want to approach a character with love. You want to look up to them so that you do them justice and I really did that with him, and I think he's a much better person than I am and I'm really gonna miss it."