‘Yellowstone’ Director John Dutton’s Bloody Crime Scene, Beth’s Primal Moan and More Secrets

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “Yellowstone” Season 5 Episode 9, “Wish is all you need.”

Sunday’s ‘Yellowstone’ Game Changer Starring Patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) he was killed after the actor decided not to return to the show. As shocking as the event was, the aftermath has reverberations that set the stage for the entire season.

More from Variety

He spoke with the director Christina Alexandra Voros Variety about the intense emotions of filming the episode, how the crew supports the cast during the complicated days of filming and what the sequel series “The Madison” will have in common with “Yellowstone”.

A lot of time passed between the filming of the first and second half of season 5, and Kevin Costner also left before filming the second half. What was the atmosphere like on set bringing everyone back together for the first time?

It was kind of cool. We were all together for a long time as a family and then we had a long break between the strike and Kevin and everything. I think everyone felt very excited to be together again, but also a tremendous sense of obligation as storytellers. I think when everybody’s done with the show, everybody’s tired and they want to go back to their families and take care of their lives. But when so much time had passed, everyone was glad to be back in the same beautiful place together – summer in Montana – and to be able to tell this amazing story. It was pretty awesome.

What was the biggest challenge in the long gap between filming the two parts of the season?

We are very lucky that it really is a big family. There are people who have been on the show every day since the first season, so there’s a great shorthand. Recovery isn’t as hard as you might think because we’ve all been doing it for a long time. It’s muscle memory.

I think the challenge this year is that the writing was so ambitious and resonant and deep and tough. The actors had to go places they hadn’t been before this season and it demanded a lot from everyone. There were seasons when fireworks exploded and gunfights and horses cascading down the mountain. This season’s fireworks are really exciting and performance based. The cast left it all on the floor. One of the highlights of my career has been watching some of the performances that Wes (Bentley) and Cole (Hauser) and Kelly (Reilly) and Luke (Grimes) have given the show this season. It’s just amazing.

Kelly’s screams during this episode were so primal. How did the two of you discuss those scenes that demanded so much from her emotionally?

My creative relationship with Kelly is one of the things I value most in my career as a storyteller. She always brings it. I don’t think anyone knows how hard she works, how deep she searches, how vulnerable she allows herself to be. But I think there’s a deep trust for her fellow actors, for the crew. There is trust that she will be groomed, that she will be given the space she needs to pull off such a performance. There is an enormous amount of communication.

My first AD, Kether Abeles, is a master at designing programs to protect actors, to help them preserve their resources. It’s a holistic approach to building a season where a lot of it is based on the emotional demands placed on the actors. Let’s rehearse, get everything set up, wait until the light is perfect, know exactly where the cameras are moving for the second setup, have our focus marks all ready. Then it’s almost like Tai Chi – you move from one and everyone knows where it goes. It’s all very quiet, not “Oh my God… We’ve got to get this before the sun goes down.” You can’t do that on a stage like that and get that performance. You have to set the table to allow that performance to be brought to you.

How did you decide how much to show the crime scene with John’s body?

I can’t speak to (creator) Taylor’s (Sheridan) thoughts as I write it, but what I will say is that it was definitely a choice to acknowledge that death becomes real when you see its effect on people who are still alive . You could have a three minute shot of a body on the ground and it would be less than 30 seconds on Kelly’s face looking at that body. The emotional impact of the death is more interesting than the death itself, and I think that can be said about the entire season.

You could have done a whole season of “Oh, how is John Dutton going to disappear?” Or you could go for the first five minutes and then we know nobody knows what’s going to happen next. It leaves many other questions unanswered. I was shocked when I first read the script, but when I started to see where the rest of the season was going, it made so much sense. It was such a bold move. It left a lot more room for the characters and the actors who embody those characters to really become the truest and purest versions of themselves—the strongest, but also the most vulnerable. The juxtaposition in these flashbacks of what life was like against the harsh reality of this new paradigm is a beautiful and complicated way to deepen the impact of this loss. I think the audience will be a little messed up in a similar way to the characters being messed up.

You are also working on the ‘Yellowstone’ series ‘The Madison’. What can “Yellowstone” fans expect with that show?

It’s such a different story. The common point is the landscape. We’re in Montana, but it’s seen through a completely different lens, so it feels like another facet of this cut stone that’s been polished. There are parallels in the realm of landscape and the place of a human being in that space, but he comes at it from a completely different point of view.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The best of the variety