'Yellowstone' Scripts For Final Season Were More Secretive Than the MCU, Director Reveals
Yellowstone‘s upcoming final episodes are premiering very soon!
Leading up to the fifth season’s return, director Christina Voros opened up about the secrecy around the show’s scripts, with some saying it was even more secretive than Marvel.
Keep reading to find out more…
“We have some people in the crew who worked in the Marvel universe, and they thought what we were doing was crazy,” she told THR.
“Really, it was all borne out of protecting what Taylor [Sheridan] and this cast and this family of creators has built over the years, and knowing how much anticipation there was for these scripts. The energy around it was more about protecting it for the audience than it was some clandestine thing, and we went to great, great lengths,” she added. “We didn’t have a script coordinator; I took over that role and did the redactions for every cast member. Most of the cast only got the scenes they were in. So for a large portion of the cast, even for some of our seven-year veterans, they will be learning what happens when the show premieres.”
Christina also revealed how they kept everything so secretive on set.
“In a strange way, we likened it to COVID protocols. What you don’t have access to won’t make you informed. So it was a tricky process because you can’t just give someone their lines — there’s information their character may have learned in other scenes,” Christina said. “There was a certain amount of art that went into strategizing what information people had to be able to embody their characters, and know what their characters know without opening up any of the more sensitive material to people who didn’t need to know it. And it was never out of a fear of anyone in the family not protecting the story. It was more that, if you know something, you might accidentally mention it. We were just protecting the cast and crew from even having that information, so we didn’t have to worry about whether or not they were keeping some things secret.”
“So the process of redaction added a whole other layer; not only for me, but really for every department. Typically, the department gets the scripts and they share them with everyone in their team, everything from people doing clearances to people picking paint colors. So this strategy extended to not just getting scripts for actors, but also what needed to be shared within key crew and personnel to allow them to do their jobs without having to bear the weight of keeping secrets. I really have to give a shout out to everyone on our creative team, because it added several layers of work and strategic information sharing across every department.”
Christina also noted that while they had scenes with extras, they filmed variations, with some actors having different dialogue so no one could go home and share what they did that day. She said they had closed sets, much like you would while filming nude scenes.
“We had very, very closed sets. We treated every scene really as if it was a closed set, so you had the same protocols as if you had nudity on set, where it was only key personnel at the monitors,” she said. “When we would do blocking rehearsals, typically the cast runs the lines and the ACs put down marks. In these blocking rehearsals, we wouldn’t actually run the dialogue. The actors would move around the space, landing on their marks. But they wouldn’t actually say the dialogue, and only the people in the closed set would actually see the scenes. So, it was rather cloak and dagger.”
In case you missed it, check out the teaser trailer for the upcoming season five part two of Yellowstone!
The series returns THIS upcoming Sunday (November 10) on Paramount Network.