Tim McGraw’s role of James Dutton on “Yellowstone” was only supposed to be as a guest star. “I’d been a fan of Yellowstone since the first night it came out,” Tim explained. “So, Taylor (Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone) called, and he goes, ‘Hey man, I want you to be in Yellowstone, and you’re gonna play the original Dutton who founded the Yellowstone Ranch.”

Taylor didn’t just want Tim, he wanted his wife Faith Hill to play his TV wife!  “He said, ‘You’re also gonna have a wife. Do you think Faith would be interested in playing your wife?’ And,” for some reason Tim says, “it took me about three days to get the nerve up to ask her. She said, ‘Sure, I’ll be glad to do it. It’ll be fun.’ So, we did two flashback episodes.”

Tim fell in love with playing the role after filming the first scene. He recalls, “The first thing we shot, it was just so much fun. We’re going so fast and the shootout was so great. I remember gettin’ off the horse and walkin’ around going, ‘I don’t care if I do any other film for the rest of my life, I wanna do westerns from now on.’”

The role became much larger than just a guest role. “Cut to later on, Taylor called me and said, ‘I showed the flashbacks to the studio and they want to do a whole series now,” Tim shares. “So, when he sent the script for 1883 and we read it, Faith and I both were like, ‘This is just too special. It’s just too special not to do.”

Source: Tim McGraw