Kevin Costner’s First TV Western Did In 3 Episodes What Yellowstone Couldn’t Do In 53 md20

Before Yellowstone, Kevin Costner starred in Hatfields & McCoys, a Western TV series that took on the genre more effectively than Yellowstone. For a lot of TV viewers, Kevin Costner is the guy from Yellowstone, and while that role has come to define the Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker’s late career, it also ignores the vast body of work that came before.

Yellowstone is the standard that recent Western TV shows are matched up against, but the series would probably not have been nearly as successful if Costner had not agreed to lead it. Costner proved what he could accomplish in a Western TV show in just three episodes, six years before he starred as John Dutton III in Yellowstone​​​​​.

Hatfields & McCoys Was Nominated For 16 Emmys And Won 5

In 2012, Kevin Costner produced and starred in the History Channel epic miniseries, Hatfields & McCoys, based on the notorious feud between the Hatfield family of West Virginia and the McCoy family of Kentucky that began in the middle of the 19th century and lasted up until the beginning of the 1890s.

Costner plays William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield in the three-episode miniseries, the patriarch of the Hatfield family. The show currently has a 71% on Rotten Tomatoes and earned two Golden Globe nominations in the Best Miniseries or TV Film and Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film categories, with Costner winning Best Actor.

The series also earned a staggering 16 Emmy nominations, with nine of those nominations being Creative Arts Emmys. Hatfields & McCoys won five of those Emmys. Costner won Outstanding Lead Actor, and Tom Berenger won for Outstanding Supporting Actor. It is Costner’s only Emmy win, and it was only his second Golden Globe until Yellowstone​​​​​.

How Hatfields & McCoys Is Different From Yellowstone

Despite starring Kevin Costner in a gruff patriarch role, Hatfields & McCoys and Yellowstone are different shows, and that’s after accounting for the time period. Both shows are about family loyalty, vengeance, and protecting what you claim to be your god-given right, but Hatfields & McCoys is more tragic.

There is plenty of tragedy to Yellowstone, but that tragedy comes from somewhere more personal, greedy, and human. The tragedy in Hatfields & McCoys feels more a result of greater, national forces that rip neighbors and friends apart. An unstoppable force that only leads to pain. Also, Yellowstone only had one Emmy nomination in 53 episodes, so there’s that.

Kevin Costner Loves Sweeping, Multipart Westerns

Kevin Costner sure does love his sweeping epics. From Dances with Wolves to Yellowstone, he’s been a part of the Western genre for decades. His latest outing, Horizon: An American Saga, like Hatfields & McCoys, is a multi-parter, and depending on when parts 2, 3, and 4 come out, Costner could be the face of Westerns for another decade.