Taylor Sheridan breaks silence on Kevin Costner's 'Yellowstone' departure: 'I’m disappointed'

"Yellowstone" show runner Taylor Sheridan opened up about the show’s last season in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. The second half of the fifth and final season of "Yellowstone" premieres in November.

Sheridan expressed disappointment about the departure of lead actor Kevin Costner from the show. John Dutton, ranch owner and Dutton family patriarch, is the focal point of "Yellowstone."

“I’m disappointed,” Sheridan said. “It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it.”

According to Sheridan, Costner left the series to pursue his upcoming four-movie Western saga, "Horizon," which he is co-writing, producing and directing.

“My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project he wanted to direct,” Sheridan said, referring to "Horizon." He continued, "He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with 'Yellowstone.' I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward (his exit date),’ which we did.”

The actor has not yet made a public statement on his exit from the show. TODAY.com has reached out for comment.

"My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered,” Sheridan says. “His creation of John Dutton is symbolic and powerful … and I’ve never had an issue with Kevin that he and I couldn’t work out on the phone. But once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting."

Wrapping up "Yellowstone"‘s fifth season has also been complicated by the ongoing Writer’s Guild of America strike, which has impacted the production schedule of many shows.

Though Sheridan writes each episode of Yellowstone alone, he has also temporarily stopped writing in support of the strike.

While "Yellowstone" may be wrapping up its last season, the story of the Dutton family and their ranch is far from over.

The show's success has generated multiple other spinoff shows in the "Yellowstone" universe, including prequel show "1883" and its follow-up series "1883: The Bass Reeves Story," and Depression-era prequel 1923. Other upcoming spinoffs include "6666," which will focus on the present-day operations of the famous Four Sixes Ranch, and an unnamed spinoff series starring Matthew McConaughey.

Sheridan is eager to continue the "Yellowstone" story with McConaughey in the upcoming spinoff.

“He seems like a natural fit,” Sheridan says. “We had a few conversations over the years, and spitballed a few ideas. Then he started watching 'Yellowstone' and responded to it. He was like, ‘I want to do that.’ And by ‘that’ he meant diving into a raw world clashing up against the modern world. And then I said, ‘Buddy, that we can do.’”

Sheridan plans to carry the ethos of the original series into new storylines.

“There are lots of places where a way of life that existed for 150 years is slamming against a new way of life, but the challenges are completely different,” he continued. “There are a lot of places you can tell this story.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com