Yellowstone‘s Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser finally broke their silence after their Dutton Ranch spinoff went through a shocking showrunner shakeup.
“Showrunners change all the time,” Hauser, 51, recently told The Hollywood Reporter in a joint interview. “This business is about adapting.”
He continued: “We’ve been doing this for a long time. Things change. People move on.”
Reilly, 48, had a similar outlook, adding, ” We finished [season one] with Chad beautifully. We finished this season together. It was a really difficult but really satisfying show to make. And so was Yellowstone.”
Looking ahead, the actress wanted to focus on the positive. “So is anything worth making,” she concluded. “We’re all creative minds and we all work together and I’m so proud of that.”
Shortly before the show premiered in June, Chad Feehan was in charge of the Yellowstone spinoff.
Us Weekly later confirmed that Feehan would not return as showrunner after an April report that the producer who created Lawmen: Bass Reeves with creator Taylor Sheridan stepped away from Dutton Ranch after alleged friction with series stars Hauser and Reilly, among others.
Sheridan and his producing partner David Glasser, along with the two leads, were allegedly more unhappy with how Feehan ran the production than with the scripts.
Executive producer Christina Voros broke her silence about Feehan’s reported firing, telling ScreenRant in May that he did “an exceptional job building a world of adversaries for Rip and Beth” in the Yellowstone spinoff.
Voros noted that when it came to “dynamics behind his departure,” she didn’t have much to add. She went on to say that Dutton Ranch had at that point not “come out into the world yet” so a future without Feehan was “beyond” her knowledge on the subject.
The director expressed gratitude to Feehan and his team for “creating a world for these characters to move into.”
Paramount+ later renewed Dutton Ranch for season 2 — but there hasn’t been a showrunner update yet.
Dutton Ranch isn’t the only Sheridan show to go through showrunner changes. Lioness, Tulsa King and Frisco King have also experienced shifts — and not every show had a showrunner season to season.
Dutton Ranch airs on Paramount+ Fridays.
