'Yellowstone' Director Reveals Strict Anti-Spoiler Protocols

The second half of the final season of Yellowstone is just days away from premiering, and the crew behind the hit Western drama is dishing on how it all came together in strict secrecy to avoid any information getting out during production. 

Christina Voros, who has directed episodes of the series as well as some of Yellowstone spin-off 1883, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about keeping story details under wraps while filming the show's last season. 

"It was all borne out of protecting what [show creator] 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," Voros said. "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. 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."

It was so intense, Voros said, that crew members who have worked on Marvel projects were impressed with the level of privacy. The team "likened it to COVID protocols" but noted it wasn't because they distrusted anyone working on the show. 

"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," she explained. 

"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 continued. "We wouldn’t actually run the dialogue [in blocking rehearsals]. 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... It was all in service of protecting the story for the audience."

Season 5B of Yellowstone kicks off Nov. 10 on Paramount Network and comes to its grand conclusion Dec. 15.