Why ‘Yellowstone’ Creator, Taylor Sheridan, Prefers To Write His Scripts Completely Alone

Taylor Sheridan Yellowstone

Taylor Sheridan prefers to work solo… if he has the time to do so.

The writer, director and creator of shows like Yellowstone, its prequel and sequel spinoffs, and his other hits like Landman, Special Ops: Lioness, and Tulsa King is very particular about his storytelling. Viewers know a Taylor Sheridan show when they see one, and that feeling of his shows, characters, and plot lines is intentional.

And most of time, it’s coming solely from the mind of Sheridan.

Taylor Sheridan’s obsessiveness with controlling his shows is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, he’s basically got a perfect track record with shows and movies. They are all successful, and that’s especially true when he’s the one penning the scripts.

On the flip side, there’s only so much Taylor Sheridan to go around. He’d love to be pumping out a plethora of shows where he’s the sole writer, but that’s physically impossible with the number of plates he has spinning. Sheridan once said that he initially hoped that he’d be able to get show’s started off on the right track, then hand them off and entrust others with them… but that didn’t work out:

“The plan was I would ‘Greg Berlanti’ it. I would write, cast, and direct the pilots, and then we would bring in someone as a showrunner to run a writers’ room, and I could check in and guide them. That plan failed. There were some things that none of us foresaw.”

Just in case you didn’t understand the reference, Greg Berlanti is another writer and director who famously gets projects off the ground and then turns them over to others.

Basically, it came down to Taylor Sheridan having a certain style, and realizing that others can’t easily mimic it. The Yellowstone creator went to say that it also boiled down to other writers wanting ownership of their work – much like he does – and he quickly discovered that if he wanted to do something one way, he’d have to do it himself:

“My stories have a very simple plot that is driven by the characters as opposed to characters driven by a plot — the antithesis of the way television is normally modeled. I’m really interested in the dirty of the relationships in literally every scene.

But when you hire a room that may not be motivated by those same qualities — and a writer always wants to take ownership of something they’re writing — and I give this directive and they’re not feeling it, then they’re going to come up with their own qualities. So for me, writers rooms, they haven’t worked.”

That being said, there are some instances where Sheridan has no choice but to be hands-off, just because of his time limitations. The upcoming Kayce Dutton spinoff Y: Marshals will be the first time that Taylor doesn’t have writing or showrunner credits on a project under the Yellowstone umbrella. He’ll still be an executive producer for the project, but that’s all he’ll be.

And he does have other shows like Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves where others wrote the scripts and he just oversaw the productions. But for every show of his that he doesn’t write on his own, there’s a handful that’s all Taylor Sheridan.

He’s the sole writer of Lioness and Landman, and plans to write those on his own all the way to each series’ end (like he did with Yellowstone). He writes those shows (among his others) in an one-room, writing isolation chamber in Wyoming, and says he can write multiple episodes in eight to 1o hour sessions.

Though it might be a lot to handle for Taylor Sheridan, he’s more than proven that he’s built for it. And the added work on his plate is just a result from him now wanting to sacrifice storytelling:

“I spent the first 37 years of my life compromising. When I quit acting, I decided that I am going to tell my stories my way, period. If you don’t want me to tell them, fine. Give them back and I’ll find someone who does — or I won’t, and then I’ll read them in some freaking dinner theater. But I won’t compromise. There is no compromising.”

There you have it… Taylor Sheridan doesn’t compromise. That’s why he often prefers to handle the task of writing on his own.