Taylor Sheridan is best known for his television dramas, with Yellowstone his most popular, but he also has several movies to his name,

featuring familiar actors. Sheridan is a screenwriter, with movies such as Sicario to his name, and Sheridan has also directed several movies, including Hell or High Water and Wind River.

 

 

While that wasn’t much more than a cameo appearance by the director, Sheridan had a much more significant role in Yellowstone, where he played Travis Wheatley. In the popular Western series, Wheatley was a professional horseman and horse trainer from Texas who represented Bosque Ranch in rodeo competition.

 

 

He made his Yellowstone debut in the first season, but appeared in five episodes in the fourth season and four more in the fifth season. That fourth season saw him taking Jimmy (Jefferson White) with him as a favor to the Dutton family as they went on a rodeo tour through the West.

 

 

Sheridan also appeared as Charles Goodnight in the Yellowstone prequel 1883 and plays Cody Spears in Sheridan’s thriller series Lioness. He has mostly quit acting, aside from his own projects, with 12 Strong (2018) as his only outside role since he directed Hell or High Water.

 

 

Buck Taylor is a legendary Western actor who became well-known for his role as Deputy Newly O’Brien on the CBS series Gunsmoke, which ran for 20 seasons and was the longest-running episodic television series until The Simpsons surpassed it. While his career spans 60 years, his filmography is not extensive.

However, he was a big signing for Taylor Sheridan when he cast Taylor as “Old Man” in Hell of High Water. Taylor had already had a comeback in the 2000s with roles in the Stephen King horror movie The Mist and the sci-fi Western Cowboys and Aliens, and signing on with Sheridan helped him return to a straight Western.

While the “Old Man” role was smaller, it led to a bigger role in Yellowstone, where Buck Taylor played Emmett Walsh. He was an experienced rancher and appeared in eight episodes, with three in the first season and three in the fifth. He was in the very first episode of the series as the chairman of the Stock Growers Association.

Emmett Walsh’s death on Yellowstone was also sad. This happened in the Season 5 episode, “Cigarettes, Whiskey, a Meadow and You.” What made it sad was that it wasn’t a violent death; he just died in his sleep. It was typical of the West, as John Dutton said, “He just died on the trail, like every cowboy dreams it.”

Martin Sensmeier was early in his career when Taylor Sheridan cast him in the mystery thriller Wind River. This movie was an important Western, as it told the mostly untold story of Indigenous women who are murdered every year, only to have their bodies disappear, with no one discovering what happened to them.

Sensmeier plays Chip Hanson in Wind River, the brother of the Indigenous woman who was found dead, frozen to death after being a victim of a sexual assault. He also got a chance to continue the story in the upcoming Wind River sequel (without Sheridan’s involvement), where he became a tracker in the wake of his sister’s death.

Taylor Sheridan must have liked what he saw because he then brought in Sensmeier for a recurring role in Yellowstone’s second season as Martin. He was a physical therapist who worked with Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and began an affair with her, although she ended things to remain with her husband.

Sensmeier got one more chance in 2022 when Sheridan cast him in a recurring role in the first season of the Yellowstone prequel series 1883. In this, he played a Comanche warrior in Kansas named Sam. He appeared for three episodes, but chose not to travel with the caravan and stayed to defend his land.