Former Yellowstone star Kevin Costner has said he was “really f**king bothered” by the way his departure from the show was portrayed.
The star played John Dutton on the Paramount+ series before departing following the first part of the fifth and final season, with his exit attributed to his work on Horizon: An American Saga.
With various outlets reporting on the fallout, Costner has told his side of the story in recent weeks, and claimed that the scheduling conflict stemmed from the decision to split the final season into two parts.
“Their big plan was to suddenly do eight [episodes] now and then in the fall do eight more,” he recalled to TVLine. “I said, ‘I have a contract to do Horizon, and I have people and money.’ I think there was a belief that I couldn’t get it mounted.”
“Somebody picked up the idea that I only wanted to work one week. And that has been a carryover thing that I have seen in magazines: that I’ve only wanted to work one week,” he continued.
“My big disappointment is I never heard Paramount or 101 really come to my defense and say, ‘That’s not true. He was going to do three more seasons.’ That’s really f–king bothered me, that none of them would actually try to set the record straight.”
In a separate interview, Costner expanded on the matter, saying that the studio kept altering the schedule as he attempted to film Horizon, explaining: “Horizon was set in the middle, but Yellowstone was in first position. I fit [Horizon] into the gaps. They just kept moving their gaps.
“I just elected not to get into that. But if you know me well enough, I made Yellowstone the first priority, and to insinuate anything else would be wrong. I did not initiate any of those things. They did. They should have known that there was going to be an opportunity for me to say something.”
