Tim McGraw has shared everyday life with Faith Hill for 25 years, but it still took him three days to work up the courage to ask his real wife if she would play his wife on television.
The couple stars in “1883,” but McGraw says the idea started out much smaller.
“I’ve been a fan of ‘Yellowstone’ since it came out,” McGraw recently told Big Machine Label Group. “(“Yellowstone” creator) Taylor called and goes, ‘Hey man, I want you to be in ‘Yellowstone.’ You’re going to play the original Dutton who founded the Yellowstone ranch. He said, ‘You’re also going to have a wife. Do you think Faith would be interested in playing your wife?’”
McGraw said it took him three days “to get up the nerve to ask her.”
“She said sure, ‘I’d be glad to do it. It’d be fun,’” McGraw recalled. “So, we did two flashback episodes. 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.’”
McGraw wasn’t the only one who thought it was so great. Sheridan showed the flashback episodes to the studio executives who watched them and decided they wanted a series based on the scenes.
“When (Sheridan) sent the script for “1883,” we both read it, and Faith and I were like, ‘This is too special not to do,’” McGraw said.
McGraw and Hill play James and Margaret Dutton in the Paramount+ series that follows as their family ventures west, where they eventually establish Yellowstone Ranch. The 10-episode season concludes Sunday, but the show will return with more episodes at a later date.