Dennis Quaid

Dennis Quaid Says He’s ‘Making Mayhem’ with Taylor Sheridan on Set of ‘1883: The Bass Reeves Story’

Dennis Quaid let it slip that he’s having a great time filming Taylor Sheridan‘s Yellowstone prequel 1883: The Bass Reeves Story. The Yellowstone mastermind is set to personally helm the first two episodes of the series. On Tuesday, the 68-year-old actor gushed about his collaboration with the 52-year-old filmmaker on an upcoming Western series. The Innerspace star even mentioned that his call time was at 4 am the next morning.

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“Riding horses, shooting guns. You know, making mayhem at 4 in the morning,” Quaid told Fox News about the production. It’s important to keep in mind that Sheridan, as well as Paramount+, have not officially declared Quaid’s casting news yet.

David Oyelowo will star as Bass Reeves. Bass made history when he became the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi in the 1870s. According to reports, this celebrated lawman apprehended over 3000 criminals and took out 14 outlaws in Indian Territory during Sheridan’s “1883” time period.

Details on Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming series

Last July, Oyelowo disclosed Sheridan’s association with “Bass Reeves” during a dinner hosted by Paramount Media Networks and MTV Entertainment Studios’ president & CEO Chris McCarthy plus 101 studios’ CEO David Glasser in London. “The reality is that [Taylor] is one of the best directors on the planet,” Oyelowo told Deadline last summer.

With Sheridan at the helm of the first two episodes, Oyelowo wanted to gather an eclectic team of filmmakers for this project. “We have to populate the show with a bunch of black people. [So] going forward the next Taylors are black and brown. So that it doesn’t become a scarcity of the top-flight black director,” Oyelowo explained.

Sheridan confirmed he’d direct the project via text

At the dinner, Oyelowo revealed that he had been attempting to launch the project for 10 years. Alongside his wife Jessica Oyelowo, Sheridan, David Permut, Glasser, Ron Burkle, and Bob Yari are all producers on the show. In the series, Oyelowo stated that viewers will get to explore Bass’ long and storied life. It will follow him from his days as a slave, learning the Native languages of Indian Territories and honing tracking skills, to eventually becoming a deputy marshal in an era full of lawlessness – the Wild West.

“The mortality rate of being a deputy marshal back then was so high that the fact that he had 3,000 arrests – and a career that spanned into his 60s. These were things that were just unthinkable,” Oyelowo said. Oyelowo remembers that when Sheridan read the script as an executive producer, he was so captivated by it that he decided to abandon everything else just to direct the first two episodes. The actor said Taylor Sheridan sent him a text that read, “I love the script. I hope you don’t mind if I direct it, sir?”