Yellowstone just released a video detailing the great efforts it’s taking to protect spoilers about Kevin Costner’s exit. The biggest undertaking is redacting every cast member’s scripts so they can only see their own lines. Ironically, the video includes a shot of an un-redacted script. But it’s seemingly from the first half of Season 5, which aired in 2022. The video also shows a clip of Kelly Reilly‘s Beth looking bereft.
The featurette released on Friday (September 27) shows the returning stars on set of Season 5 Part 2, premiering November 10 on Paramount Network (and also CBS!). Costner is, of course, absent save for old show footage, but his former costars reveal in the video that even they are being kept in the dark about the season’s plot. Director Christina Voros says in the clips that keeping the season’s narrative under tight lock and key has thrown the cast and crew into uncharted territory that vastly differs from their past years of production on the hit show.
“On one hand it was a big family reunion coming back, and on the other it was a new set of challenges,” she says above. “There was a lot of security around the script and the narrative.”
Kelsey Asbille, who plays Monica, adds that “this season has been very secretive.”
“We get these redacted scripts,” Jen Landon (Teeter), reveals while seated next to costar Denim Richards (Colby). “Basically everything is blacked out except for your lines.”
The actors don’t specify whether these protections were just for the first episode, which will presumably reveal how John Dutton is being written out of the show, or every episode in the six-part season. But it’s probably the latter.
Dawn Olivieri (Sarah Atwood) and Wendy Moniz (Lynelle Perry) appear next. “I don’t know what she did, she doesn’t know what I did. We can’t tell each other,” Olivieri shares. As Moniz later adds, “It speaks to how special this is going to be.”
Richards says it’s going to make each scene inherently more dramatic. “The audience will really see real reactions that really were not rehearsed,” he explains.
An non-redacted script appears onscreen that details a scene between Lynelle Perry and Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham, who’s also featured in this featurette). The scene is about drinking water on the Native American reservation. In Season 5 Part 1, the federal government wanted to run two natural gas and captured carbon pipelines underneath the reservation’s drinking water supply. Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) is also in the scene, as the script below shows. The script draft is dated July 2022, so this probably from Season 5 Part 1.
Paramount
Voros goes on to praise the cast’s work, saying that Reilly, Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes, Wes Bentley, and more are “at the top of their games” this season. “I have been moved more by the performances by the cast than I ever have been.”
Protecting the narrative, Voros says, is “a huge testament to the intrepidness of the crew because you’ve learned how to do something a certain way for seven years, and all of a sudden to have a new set of challenges that come from protecting the story for the sake of the audience.”
Executive producer David Glasser says there are going to be “a ton of surprises for the fans” this season. Birmingham says the new episodes are a “visceral, emotional roller coaster with every character across the board.” Finn Little (Carter) says things will get crazy quickly when the show premieres. “A lot is going to happen in a very short amount of time,” he shares.
Then the Dutton siblings chime in. Bentley says it’s going to be an “exciting” season because fans “have been waiting a long time to see what’s going to happen with a few things.” Reilly gushes that she can’t wait for viewers to “see this,” implying a special meaning to the upcoming episodes. And Grimes says he’s been brought to tears while filming. “It’s brought me to tears. It’s really, really good, and I think people are going to love it,” he says, closing out the video.
Watch the full featurette above.
