Kevin Costner Reacts to the Way ‘Yellowstone’ Killed Him Off

Kevin Costner shared his thoughts on the way Yellowstone handled his exit from the show in the season 5B premiere — and he has some notes.

The Oscar winner, 69, weighed in on the Paramount Network drama’s return during a Monday, November 11, interview on SiriusXM’s The Michael Smerconish Program. Before reacting to the way his character, John Dutton, died in the Sunday, November 10, episode, Costner claimed he didn’t even know the show was back.

“I’m going to be perfectly honest. I didn’t know it was actually airing last night,” he said. “That’s a swear-to-God moment. I’ve been seeing ads with my face all over the place and I’m thinking, ‘Gee, I’m not in that one.’ But I didn’t realize yesterday was the thing.”

Costner went on to note that he hasn’t seen the episode, but he does (sort of) know how series cocreator Taylor Sheridan wrote him off.

“I heard it’s a suicide, so that doesn’t make me want to rush to go see it,” he said.

As viewers know, however, that’s not exactly what happened. Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) hired a hitman to off John because she thought that’s what Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) wanted, and said hitman only made it look like suicide because he thought that would be cleaner than staging a heart attack. While investigators seemed to buy it, Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Kayce (Luke Grimes) immediately smelled a rat and suspected that their dad — who had no history of mental health issues or addiction — was murdered.

Despite not having seen the episode, Costner sensed that suicide wasn’t the whole story and noted he has faith in Sheridan’s ability to craft a more complex end for his character.

“They’re pretty smart people,” he said. “Maybe it’s a red herring. Who knows? They’re very good. And they’ll figure that out.”

Earlier this week, director Christina Voros, who helmed the season 5B premiere, confirmed that Sheridan, 54, was the person who decided John Dutton’s fate.

“It’s Taylor’s world. He made the bold decision,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Sunday. “I think Taylor’s decision to begin this way was incredibly brave. I think it is testament to his faith in the characters and the actors who embody them to go, ‘Let’s not make this about the incident. Let’s make this about how these human beings exist in the aftermath.’ That was more interesting to [Taylor] than the incident itself.”

Costner confirmed his exit from Yellowstone in June after over a year of speculation about whether he’d be back for the show’s final batch of episodes. The drama began in early 2023 when rumors circulated that he and Sheridan were at odds about filming schedules for season 5B, which was originally set to premiere in November 2023.

Both sides denied any bad blood at the time, and Yellowstone was further delayed by the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of last year. In the meantime, Costner turned his focus to his film series Horizon: An American Saga, the first part of which hit theaters in June. Chapter 2 was originally set to premiere in August, but its release date was indefinitely pushed back after Chapter 1’s poor performance at the box office.

In May, Costner finally addressed the rumors about why he left the show, claiming that Sheridan had not written any scripts for 5B when he was called back to film.

“I gave them 25 of my days for this B thing in November and December [2022]. What they called 5B. The whole month of March [2023],” he told Deadline at the time. “I didn’t shoot 5B. There was no script. And then things imploded.”

Sheridan has not publicly addressed Costner’s claims.

Yellowstone airs on Paramount Network Sundays at 8 p.m. ET.