The neo-Western “Yellowstone” is ultimately all about one thing — a family’s struggle to make sure that no one takes the land they own. Given that said land is a giant ranch in Montana and the Dutton family goes about defending it against developers and other adversaries with copious firearms and manpower, “Yellowstone’s” politics are not exactly simple, to say the least.
Still, if you ask Luke Grimes — who plays Kayce Dutton on the show — people with liberal-leaning world views are unfair to call “Yellowstone” a conservative show. This is because he feels that it’s too easy to criticize the series based on appearances alone.
“I think a lot of people see a cowboy hat and a horse and they think, ‘Oh, that’s not for me, those people believe differently.'” he told The Independent. “And it’s almost like they take these flawed characters in the show and chalk it up to some sort of weird belief that they’ve put on them. Meanwhile, you can have a terrible person like [‘Succession’s’] Logan Roy, who lives in an apartment in Manhattan, and that’s fine.”
People who make Yellowstone think it’s hard to label
Luke Grimes isn’t the only person involved in making “Yellowstone” who’s spoken against giving the show an easy political label. In 2023, Summer Higgins actor Piper Perabo addressed the “red-state show” criticism against “Yellowstone” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, noting that “Yellowstone” is far from a one-ideology pony. “I think there are a lot of both sides in Yellowstone,” Perabo said. “Almost no show has as many Native American leads as Yellowstone does, except for ‘Reservation Dogs.’ And to me, that’s very cool and modern and diverse.”
For similar reasons, the show’s initial negative reviews didn’t surprise “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan has compared “Yellowstone’s” approach to punk rock in that early on, the show focused less on conventional storytelling and more on studying different viewpoints within a certain setting. All in all, there may be more than a few questionable things people ignore on “Yellowstone,” but if you ask the people making the show, the common criticism that it’s a cut-and-dry conservative show certainly shouldn’t be among them.