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Tim McGraw revealed that it took him days to muster the courage to ask his wife whether she would play his on-screen wife in the hit Paramount+ series, 1883. The country artist recently recalled Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone, offering him the role of James Dutton — and asking whether Faith Hill would be interested in joining him.
McGraw says “it took me about three days to get the nerve up to ask her.”
Their roles as James and Margaret Dutton started with just two flashback episodes of Yellowstone before landing the prequel series. That was enough for McGraw to say that he didn’t “care if I do any other film for the rest of my life, I wanna do westerns from now on.” Then, when the studio was on board with a whole series, McGraw and Hill knew it was “just too special not to do.” Now, the first season’s finale is set to premiere on Sunday (February 27). Read McGraw’s full statement, shared by his record label, here:
“I’d been a fan of Yellowstone since the first night it came out. So, Taylor called, and he goes, ‘Hey man, I want you to be in Yellowstone, and you’re gonna play the original Dutton who founded the Yellowstone ranch. And he said, ‘You’re also gonna have a wife. Do you think Faith would be interested in playing your wife?’ And it took me about three days to get the nerve up to ask her. She said, ‘Sure, I’ll be glad to do it. It’ll be fun.’ So, we did two flashback episodes, but the first thing we shot, it was just so much fun. We’re going so fast and the shootout was so great. I remember gettin’ off the horse and walkin’ around going, ‘I don’t care if I do any other film for the rest of my life, I wanna do westerns from now on.’ And then cut to later on, Taylor called me and said, ‘I showed the flashbacks to the studio and they want to do a whole series now.’ So, when he sent the script for 1883 and we read it, Faith and I both were like, ‘This is just too special. It’s just too special not to do.”