“1883” is a hit, and everyone’s talking about the show. Tim McGraw, who plays James Dutton on the “Yellowstone” spinoff, explained recently in an interview with Deadline how he got involved with the show.
“I always thought I’d love to do a Western if something good ever came along,” McGraw said. He goes on to explain how the show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, came into contact with him. “The way it worked with Taylor was, my agent said Taylor wants your number. Yes, give it to him,” McGraw elaborated.
“He asked if I was a fan of Yellowstone, and I said of course I was. He asked if I would like to be on the show. I told him I’d love to do it, but I didn’t want to just be some sort of singing cowboy that comes on and gets taken to the train station or something like that. He goes, well, I might have an idea. Give me a week or so. And then, he called me back, and he told me the idea that he had, to do a flashback scene with me as the original Dutton who founded the Yellowstone Ranch. And I thought, now, that’s interesting. I really like that. And that is how the whole ball started rolling.”
Tim McGraw and Faith Hill Took On ‘1883’ Together
According to McGraw, Sheridan made no mention at the time of McGraw’s characters’ potential to ignite a spinoff series. However, that’s precisely the shoes that “1883” now fills.
McGraw is also joined on the show by his wife, Faith Hill, who portrays the matriarch Margaret Dutton on the show. With all of their children now out of their house, there was no clear next move for the pair. Most would assume they would jump fully into their successful careers in music– but then they saw the “1883” script. “We knew we were in for a lot, that this was going to be a huge production with a lot of work, that it was going to take a lot of people to pull it off, and it was going to take a lot of elbow grease,” McGraw said.
McGraw continues, “I remember, we had the contracts on our porch, and we were sitting there looking at them. I told Faith, first off, when we sign these contracts, we are not the boss anymore. And then secondly, we’re either going to be burning hot or freezing cold, and there’s never going to be any in-between. That’s the way this shoot’s going to go, and it’s going to be a lot of hard work. Of course, she’s a hard worker, so she was ready for it, and we’d fallen in love with the scripts so much. But we did think about the logistics and how hard it was going to be to get everything done in the time frame they were shooting for.”
In the end, though, the situation worked out perfectly. Both Hill and McGraw have raved about how much they enjoy shooting for “1883”. The pair even celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary while shooting on-location, and invited their daughters out to set for the occasion.
“1883” is now streaming on Paramount+.
