Taylor Sheridan Is Mad at Critics For Some Reason

It feels like an understatement to say that it’s been an interesting week for entertainment criticism. And now, Yellowstone creator turned-TV-mega-producer Taylor Sheridan is going viral for his own take on everything.

During a recent appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Sheridan went on a lengthy rant about how his approach to screenwriting differs from his contemporaries in the industry… and how he doesn’t care what backlash he gets as a result. Specifically citing criticisms about Oscar-nominated Demi Moore’s minimized role in the first season of his series Landman, he argued that it was an intentional bit of “rage-baiting” on his part.

“The critics are going to come after me,” Sheridan began. “I’m underutilizing [Moore], can’t write for women, all this nonsense. Then I’m going to kill your husband and you’re going to have to run the oil company. The critics and me — I don’t care what they think, and it annoys the shit out of them that I don’t care. I’ll be the first to tell you that there are things that I do that rage-bait them a bit, and this is one of them. Fuck ’em, honestly.”

It is worth mentioning that, by and large, Landman has been well-received on a critical level. Season 1 currently boasts a Certified Fresh 78% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Season 2 having an even higher 83%. For that matter, almost all of Sheridan’s original shows hold some sort of positive consensus on the platform, with the only exception being a 48% score for the recent Yellowstone spinoff Marshals.

So it doesn’t seem like Sheridan has a chip on his shoulder because of the critical performance, but rather because of the idea that anyone would dare challenge his approach to storytelling. Specifically with Moore’s role in Landman, it doesn’t seem unjustified for some to be unhappy that she — just months after winning awards for a movie about how the entertainment industry treats women of a certain age — was then regulated to a handful of scenes near a pool, with no clear indication that she could or would get a larger role in future seasons. This also isn’t even exclusive to Season 1 of Landman — when the show’s newest season aired last fall, Sheridan also caught flack for the introduction of a nonbinary transgender character named Paigyn, who some interpreted as a mean-spirited take on young liberal stereotypes.

Somehow, Marvel Movies Are Involved?!

Sheridan’s attitude towards it all can be seen elsewhere in the podcast appearance. He goes on a tangent against the scripts of Marvel movies for being “information dumps that you have to follow to get to the action rather than actually moving plot with action,” and argues that that kind of approach has started to affect studio executives as well.

“It didn’t used to be this way when Steve McQueen was a movie star at Paramount and Bobby Evans ran the studio because writers were turned loose,” Sheridan began. “Directors were turned completely loose. There weren’t endless rewrites. There weren’t meetings with executives about tone and mood and all this nonsense.”

“By the way, the studio executives and the network executives — these are marketing executives, for the most part. Or maybe they studied law or whatever,” Sheridan continued. “Then they came, got a job in the mailroom at CAA or WME, and hated that shit. So then they ended up as an intern at some network. Then, through attrition, they find themselves the head of development. Well, what do you know about developing story? You know nothing. So they get terrified, panicked that the audience won’t get it because they actually have no storytellers… Our business, at this point, is truly governed by these executives because they’re the ones that are going to determine whether or not your script is going to go into production. They’re going to try and control every element of that.”

When talking about his years of working with Paramount (before signing a five-year overall deal with NBCUniversal in the fall of 2025), Sheridan said that he approached things by saying: “This is not a democracy. There’s no committee. You’re going to pay me and you’re going to give me a bunch of money and I’m going to deliver you these shows. I’m pretty common and I’m going to tell stories that common people are going to understand. That’s most of America. You’re not going to win no Emmys with me, but I’m not trying to win Emmys. That’s not my goal. My goal is to sit somebody on their couch and move them, make them think, make them laugh, scare the shit out of them, excite them. That’s what I want to do, because that’s what I want from a show.”

(featured image: Paramount+)

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