Hours after No Kings Day events wrapped up in the Bay Area and across the nation, “Yellowstone” actor Kevin Costner urged the crowd at University of San Francisco not to “count yourself out” and to remain engaged in the world they will help create.

“What’s going on in this city, how cool is that, that people are flexing today?” Costner told the rapt audience Saturday, Oct. 18, at USF’s War

 

 

Memorial Gym during an hourlong conversation as part of the school’s Silk Speaker Series. “It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on right now. We can all know what we feel, but at least we’re still able to flex. Continue to do that, make a difference. You really do count.

The two-time Oscar-winner, a committed environmentalist whose politics might be considered left of center (he endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 and Wyoming’s Liz Cheney for Congress in 2022), was a late replacement for actor Nicole Kidman, who postponed her USF appearance to April, citing a scheduling conflict.

 

 

His visit comes at a turbulent moment for the 70-year-old actor, producer and director. A bombshell article in the Hollywood Reporter published Oct. 8 alleged on-set tensions, damaged professional relationships and an unwillingness to compromise on creative issues that led to his departure from the Paramount-produced Peacock series “Yellowstone” and has endangered his planned four-part Western film series “Horizon: An American Saga.”

On Thursday, Oct. 16, a judge in Los Angeles denied Costner’s request to toss out a stuntwoman’s sexual harassment and hostile workplace lawsuit, which alleges that she was “the victim of a violent unscripted, unscheduled rape scene” during the filming of the second “Horizon” movie with the lack of SAG-AFTRA mandated “intimacy or stunt” coordination. Costner has vigorously denied the allegations.

Hours after No Kings Day events wrapped up in the Bay Area and across the nation, “Yellowstone” actor Kevin Costner urged the crowd at University of San Francisco not to “count yourself out” and to remain engaged in the world they will help create.

“What’s going on in this city, how cool is that, that people are flexing today?” Costner told the rapt audience Saturday, Oct. 18, at USF’s War Memorial Gym during an hourlong conversation as part of the school’s Silk Speaker Series. “It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on right now. We can all know what we feel, but at least we’re still able to flex. Continue to do that, make a difference. You really do count.

The two-time Oscar-winner, a committed environmentalist whose politics might be considered left of center (he endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 and Wyoming’s Liz Cheney for Congress in 2022), was a late replacement for actor Nicole Kidman, who postponed her USF appearance to April, citing a scheduling conflict.

His visit comes at a turbulent moment for the 70-year-old actor, producer and director. A bombshell article in the Hollywood Reporter published Oct. 8 alleged on-set tensions, damaged professional relationships and an unwillingness to compromise on creative issues that led to his departure from the Paramount-produced Peacock series “Yellowstone” and has endangered his planned four-part Western film series “Horizon: An American Saga.”

On Thursday, Oct. 16, a judge in Los Angeles denied Costner’s request to toss out a stuntwoman’s sexual harassment and hostile workplace lawsuit, which alleges that she was “the victim of a violent unscripted, unscheduled rape scene” during the filming of the second “Horizon” movie with the lack of SAG-AFTRA mandated “intimacy or stunt” coordination. Costner has vigorously denied the allegations.