Lasso up.
“Yellowstone” star Denim Richards sadly left the show when his character, Colby, died – but he’s still around for a video series called “Stories from the Bunkhouse,” where he discusses each episode after it airs with his co-stars Ian Bohen and Jefferson White. (Videos are available on YouTube.)
Ahead of the finale of the hit ranch drama, which airs Sunday, Richards went down memory lane and told The Post about the cast’s first table read before the show premiered in 2018.
“Everyone is getting together and [Kevin Costner] walks in. He’s this massive presence, but so humble,” Richards recalled.
“Everyone is getting ready to get up from the table read and go outside. [Costner] said, ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’m scared as hell. So why don’t we come together the best we can, and make this happen, and support each other.’”
He added that after Costner spoke, “You could feel the stress go out of the room. It was a beautiful thing. This is an Oscar wining legend … whether or not he was really scared, who knows. But, it gave everyone this extra level of confidence that there’s no hierarchy.”
“Yellowstone” is about the Dutton family, owners of the largest ranch in Montana. It centers on patriarch John (Costner), who was also the governor before his death, and his adult children Kayce (Luke Grimes), Jamie (Wes Bentley), Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Beth’s husband, Rip (Cole Hauser).
The cowboy drama has been a hit, with 17 million viewers tuning into the premiere of the second half of Season 5.
Season 5 is supposedly the final season. However, on Wednesday, it was reported that Reilly and Hauser have closed deals to lead a spinoff show about Beth and Rip. In August, multiple outlets also reported that there’s a Season 6 in the works, but Paramount never announced or confirmed that. The Beth and Rip show will reportedly be a separate spinoff show, not Season 6.
Richards played Colby, one of the ranch hands who got killed by a horse.
Costner, 69, meanwhile, exited the show after the first half of Season 5, amid rumors of a feud with creator Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan initially told The Hollywood Reporter that Costner was prioritizing his box office bomb, “Horizon” over “Yellowstone.”
Costner denied that account as “a bulls – – t story” and told Deadline, “I was straight up with [Taylor Sheridan], and he said what we would do, and I believed him and we didn’t get there.”
When the second half of Season 5 premiered on Nov. 10, the show dealt with Costner’s absence by killing John off, in a hit man attack that was initially staged to look like a suicide (but at this point on the show, everyone knows it was a homicide).
Regarding the drama around Costner’s exit, Richards told The Post, “Of course, you do what you can to try to silence any stuff from the outside. As you know, sometimes things will happen and then they don’t happen.”
He continued, “Things get leaked and talked about. It’s never always exactly what necessarily sometimes people see.”
“For us, I realize this is outside of my pay grade. You can’t concern yourself with how things are going to happen,” he went on. “I look at myself as being a boat in the ocean, you can’t control how all the waves will be moving, just make sure you have a sturdy boat that can handle any and all waves. There’s been things going back and forth … you do the best you can.”
The “Yellowstone” Season 5 finale airs Sunday, Dec. 15 (8 p.m.) on Paramount Network.