Helen Mirren Reveals the ‘First Thing You Notice’ When You Meet Taylor Sheridan

“He has the hands of a rancher,” she added of the ‘Yellowstone’ creator, whom she worked alongside on ‘1923’

NEED TO KNOW

• Helen Mirren has shared the “first thing” she noticed about Taylor Sheridan
• Mirren spoke with Town & Country about her experience working with the Yellowstone creator for 1923
• “He has the hands of a rancher,” she said of another early observation she had about Sheridan

Helen Mirren is praising Taylor Sheridan.

The actress, who previously starred in Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel series 1923, is recalling her experience visiting the show creator, 56, at his Texas ranch before signing on for the project. In a new interview with Town & Country, published on Thursday, Aug. 20, she called her visit “quite an adventure for me.”

“I’d never been anywhere like that and had hardly ever been to Texas,” Mirren, 81, said of the property, located in Guthrie, Texas. “It was quite a culture shock for a foreigner to land in that heartland.”

She also detailed her initial impressions of Sheridan. “The first thing you notice with Taylor is he’s very honest,” she said, also pointing out the second thing she noticed: “He does not have the hands of a writer. He has the hands of a rancher.”

Mirren starred in 1923 alongside Harrison Ford for two seasons from 2022 to 2025, when it aired its final run on Paramount+. The pair played married couple Jacob and Cara Dutton in the series, which followed the Dutton family’s patriarch and matriarch as they endured the challenges of the early 20th century.

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Other actors in Sheridan’s universe have sounded off on his writing, with Morgan Freeman (who stars in Lioness) telling The New York Times in August that he believes it “has to do more with the human experience, what people are actually going through, emotionally, in a lot of cases.”

Freeman stars as Secretary of State Edwin Mullins in the Paramount+ series, currently in its third season.

“You saw that a lot in Yellowstone, and you actually see it a lot in any of his writings,” Freeman said in the interview, published on Friday. “And here, in Lioness, in Joe’s [Saldaña’s character] case, for instance, he is dealing with a woman whose life is on the line very often. She has kids and a husband. She makes decisions and she has to consider these.”

He added, “It takes courage to write about stuff like that, and Taylor seems to have an awful lot of it.”

New episodes of Lioness stream Sundays on Paramount+.