There is little mystery to rugged TV impresario Taylor Sheridan at this point. The creator of “Yellowstone,” “Landman,” “Mayor of Kingstown,” “Lioness,” and much of Paramount+’s modern identity likes control, dislikes Hollywood, its executives, and has built a television empire out of blunt-force dramas that critics often find ridiculous, audiences often devour, and desperate networks can’t get enough of.
Sheridan made much of this even clearer during a new appearance on “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” where he was ostensibly promoting his new book, “How to Not Die in Prison,” but spent a good deal of time talking about studio interference, his relationship to critics, and his refusal to chase awards validation.
On the studio side, Sheridan did not exactly soften his reputation as a writer-producer who has little use for notes. He criticized the current development process as bloated and fear-driven, arguing that executives too often meddle in tone, structure, and character because they do not actually understand storytelling. “This is not a democracy,” he said of the message he gave Paramount when he began building his empire there. “There’s no committee.”
That part is not especially surprising. Sheridan’s whole brand has been built around singular my-way-or-the-highway control: the lone writer, the ranch, the anti-room, the guy who does not want a dozen executives sanding the edges off his scripts. Hell, he even won the bitter “Yellowstone” war against his Academy Award-winning veteran Kevin Costner, and arguably won it singlehandedly. In an industry where too many shows feel engineered by committee, there is a real appeal to that posture, even when the results vary wildly from high-water marks like the Oscar-nominated “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water” to the most self-parodic stretches of the Sheridanverse.
But the more revealing comments came when Bill Simmons asked about critics, particularly criticism of “Landman” and its treatment of women, including the limited use of Demi Moore in season one. Sheridan said he knew viewers would see Moore largely in the background early on, assume the show had underused her, and then be surprised once her character, Cami, became more central after her husband’s death.
Sheridan said he warned Demi Moore that Cami would appear underused early in “Landman.” “You’re gonna be an extra in this show,” he recalled telling her, expecting critics to accuse him of “underutilizing” Moore and failing to “write for women.” He said the approach was intentional, designed to make Cami’s eventual importance land as a surprise and reveal her as a far more central character than audiences initially assumed.
But Sheridan admitted there was a prickly intention behind it, too. “There are things that I do that rage-bait them a bit, and this is one of them,” he said of the bait-and-switch he pulled with Moore’s character.
He also said he withheld screeners for the episodes that would reveal Moore’s larger arc “because f*ck them, honestly,” and framed the Cami twist as a reveal built through omission. Sheridan said he used a similar tactic with the season two storyline involving Ainsley and her nonbinary roommate, Paigyn, resisting pressure to resolve that tension earlier.
Sheridan said he was asked whether he wanted to compress the Paigyn and Ainsley resolution, moving the moment where they become friends from episode ten into episode nine. He refused.
“No,” Sheridan recalled saying, “for exactly the reason you’re asking.” He said he wanted to “piss you off a little,” let the viewer think, “how dare I?,” and then have them come back the next week and realize, “Oh you got me.”
But that defense isn’t very clever. “Rage-baiting” is a juvenile tactic, often used in right-wing media to provoke outrage and then cite it as proof. If Sheridan wants to silence critics, admitting he’s baiting them doesn’t exactly sound like the winning move he thinks it is.
Sheridan is obviously not just some cable-news crank, and his best work is far more complicated than that. “Sicario,” “Hell or High Water,” and “Wind River” had real moral weight, even when they trafficked in familiar Sheridan ideas about violence, masculinity, institutions, and broken American systems. But his TV empire has increasingly leaned into provocation as if irritation were equal to insight.
That pattern is not limited to “Landman.” “The Madison” opens by making New York look like an oh-so-scary cartoon hellhole, less a real city than a right-wing nightmare reel of urban chaos (read our review). Landman” turns a trans/nonbinary character beat into something that he has since acknowledged was partly intended to provoke a reaction from critics. “Lioness” has also included seemingly unnecessary and random digs at trans people that often feel less like character work than stray culture-war shrapnel.
Back on the studio-executive front, Sheridan also dismissed the modern development class as people who do not understand storytelling, saying many are really marketing or legal executives who have found themselves in charge of development.
“What do you know about developing story? You know nothing,” Sheridan said. “So they get terrified.”
He also described the larger business as one governed by executives who “try and control every element” of production, from scripts to tone to whether audiences will understand the work. That frustration is easy to understand. Plenty of TV has been flattened by corporate cowardice and excessive notes. But Sheridan’s self-mythology is doing a lot of work here, too.
When he described the Paramount arrangement, Sheridan made the transaction sound blunt and almost feudal: give me the money, stay out of the way, and I’ll deliver the shows.
“I’m pretty common,” he said, adding that he wants to tell stories that “common people” understand. “That’s most of America.”
He also addressed awards. “You’re not going to win no Emmys with me,” Sheridan said. “I’m not trying to win Emmys.”
Either way, Sheridan’s shows are not going away. “Landman,” “Lioness,” “Mayor of Kingstown,” “Tulsa King,” and the expanding “Yellowstone” universe remain central to Paramount’s scripted identity, even as Sheridan prepares for his next chapter at NBCUniversal. The audience will keep showing up, and the industry will keep chasing whatever he builds next.
Regardless, the “rage-bait” admission may prove to be an albatross Sheridan can’t easily shake. As for his relationship with critics, he has only stirred the pot further. He is not just ignoring them anymore; he is writing against them, which hardly feels like a winning strategy, even if he insists he does not care what they think. Watch the full interview below.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
