Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has addressed the criticism from some corners that he cannot write convincing female characters.
The man behind a cowboy mantle of shows that can be found on Paramount Plus has been praised for characters like Beth Dutton, but faced plenty of scorn over the women of Landman, who are seen as overly sexualised or props for the men in their lives.
In an increasingly rare interview, the TV multihyphenate has responded to all that flak, in comments that are very much in keeping with the rugged individualism seen in his shows.
Speaking on the latest episode of The Bill Simmons podcast (of calling Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ‘f**king grifters’ fame), Sheridan shrugged off the naysayers.
‘The critics are going to come after me. I’m underutilising [Moore], can’t write for women, all this nonsense,’ he said.
‘The critics and me – I don’t care what they think, and it annoys the sh** out of them that I don’t care. I’ll be the first to tell you that there are things that I do that ragebait them a bit.
‘F*** ’em, honestly,’ he said, explaining how the amount of screen time Demi Moore was given in the first season was an example of said ‘ragebaiting’.
There was much commentary when the show first aired in 2024 over the fact that Moore, who was concurrently in the awards conversation for her turn in The Substance, had been relegated to a bit-part player.
She plays the wife of Jon Hamm’s oil billionaire, but for the first season remained at his periphery, which is something Sheridan has now said he warned her of before she was cast.
‘I said, look, here’s the thing, you’re going to be an extra in this show for seven episodes. You’re an extra and the critics are going to come after me,’ Sheridan told Simmons, explaining how the Oscar nominee’s role had been beefed up for last year’s second season.
Is Taylor Sheridan bad at writing women?
Senior TV Reporter Rebecca Cook shares her take…
If you’ve watched Landman, the answer to this is a no-brainer.
On the show’s dedicated subreddit, there is an entire thread titled ‘I’m convinced Taylor Sheridan doesn’t like women,’ in which fans have piled in on the cliché-laden characters.
It isn’t just Moore, who Sheridan rightly pointed out was essentially mute for a season. The most egregious example was Ainsley, played by Michelle Randolph, whose barely-dressed scenes play out like a perverse male fantasy of how a barely-legal teenager would act.
Truly, it needs to be seen to be believed, but then you would have to actually watch it.
Whenever this argument rears its head, the counter is Yellowstone’s troubled Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly). She embodied the fantasy of an empowered, badass woman.
But over the seasons, even Beth morphed into a shrieking harpy. By Landman, that prototype had wholly degraded into Ali Larter’s oversexed hellcat Angela.
Sheridan’s film work, distant as it now seems, proved far superior. Sicario and Wind River are superb female-led films, even if they do enjoy putting the women in them through the bloody wringer.
In recent years, Sheridan has skirted around this apparent woman problem by casting impeccable actors, like Michelle Pfeiffer in The Madison or Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldaña in Lioness. They all elevate sometimes trite material that a lesser actress might not be able to work with.
Whatever I say doesn’t much matter. Even before these latest comments, Sheridan has shown he doesn’t care what critics, or anyone really, thinks of him and his work.
The popularity of his shows speaks for itself, and in some sense, that is probably the bigger issue.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Sheridan said he does not make shows in the hopes of securing Emmy nominations and told Paramount upfront that he refused to develop projects as ‘a democracy’ or ‘by committee’.
‘You’re going to pay me and you’re going to give me a bunch of money and I’m going to deliver you these shows,’ Sheridan said, recreating his conversation with execs. ‘I’m pretty common and I’m going to tell stories that common people are going to understand.’
He continued: ‘That’s most of America. You’re not going to win no Emmys with me, but I’m not trying to win Emmys. That’s not my goal.
‘My goal is to sit somebody on their couch and move them, make them think, make them laugh, scare the s*** out of them, excite them. That’s what I want to do, because that’s what I want from a show.’