Neal McDonough has become the gold standard for icy authority and controlled menace, the kind of presence that makes a room fall silent

before he even speaks. Fans know him for ruling Yellowstone as Malcolm Beck or trading blows with Sylvester Stallone as Cal Thresher in Tulsa King, roles built on power, precision, and intimidation.

 

 

But long before Taylor Sheridan came calling, and well before Marvel audiences met Dum Dum Dugan, McDonough stepped into a very different uniform. In Star Trek First Contact (1996), he played Lieutenant Hawk, a Starfleet officer whose screen time was unforgettable. Neal McDonough was not the mastermind, not the captain, not the villain. He was a committed officer doing his job, and in classic Trek fashion, he paid the price.

 

 

Adding further weight, later tie-in novels confirmed Hawk as gay, even if the movie itself never went there. For McDonough, it was an unlikely beginning that shaped everything that followed.

Some actors convince you they were born to play heroes. Neal McDonough belongs to the other camp entirely. Across television, McDonough has mastered the art of controlled danger, the kind that smiles before it strikes. His recent role as Cal Thresher in Tulsa King fits perfectly into that legacy.

 

 

Thresher is described as a powerful and extremely territorial businessman, and his clashes with Sylvester Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi feel less like arguments and more like slow-moving threats. That reputation did not appear overnight. McDonough first leaned fully into darkness on Desperate Housewives as Dave Williams, a character who arrived as a polite suburban husband and unraveled into something far more disturbing.

 

 

His grief-fueled instability felt grounded and uncomfortable, mirroring real-world trauma rather than TV theatrics. As McDonough himself told the Los Angeles Times: