RUBEN CHAMORRO

BY  TOM PHILLIP

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RUBEN CHAMORRO

THERE ARE A lot of big stars and even bigger presences peppered throughout the five seasons of Yellowstone. Obviously, the Academy Award–winning film legend Kevin Costner has always been the headliner, and he’s been joined by performers like Kelly Reilly (who plays hot-headed fan favorite Beth Dutton) and Cole Hauser (as cool-as-a-cucumber cowboy Rip), who have earned plenty of much-deserved praise. But at the end of the day, it’s Luke Grimes, the 40-year-old actor who plays Kayce (pronounced “Casey”) Dutton, the youngest son of John (Costner) and his late wife Evelyn, who’s proven to be the most vital piece of the series.

From the very first episode, it was clear that Grimes was an inspired casting choice for the strong-willed but beleaguered Kayce. While he’s got the rough-around-the-edges look of a traditional cowboy, he also comes with a pair of sad, soulful eyes that pop off the screen—he just has one of those faces. Torn between fulfilling his commitment to his wife and daughter and being brought back into the Dutton fold after years of estrangement, Kayce might be the ultimate fulcrum in the show’s treatise on family and what honoring a legacy means. “He’s really got to start making some decisions,” Grimes says about Kayce’s endgame arc. (Yellowstone’s possibly-series-but-definitely-season finale airs December 15.) “There’s no more time to sit around and think about things. He just has to do, and that can be dangerous.”

Grimes is more than just an actor who played a cowboy on one of TV’s biggest shows. He also released his debut country music album earlier this year and is now refining his act as a live musician. Recently, he spent a brief stretch in New York City and put on a solo show at the famed Webster Hall, where acts like Muse and Charli XCX cut their teeth. He also made his debut on The Tonight Show, pulling double duty as an interviewed guest and the night’s musical act, which he says was a dream come true and a lot of work all at once.

As if ending your tenure on one of television’s most watched shows of the decade and dropping an album weren’t enough, Grimes is also fresh off shooting the latest Ari Aster film, another western, called Eddington. Naturally, details are under lock and key because, shit, it’s Ari Aster, a filmmaker who’s had a Yellowstone-style cultural impact of his own since Hereditary hit theaters in 2018. “I think he could be one of the greats of our generation,” Grimes says. “It was really cool I got to do that. And that was very, very, very different from Yellowstone.”

RUBEN CHAMORRO

With Yellowstone’s bombshell season 5 nearing the finish line, Men’s Health caught up with Grimes to talk about the lessons he learned doing the show, how Kayce blends modern and traditional masculinity, and why he never wants to be in a superhero movie.

MEN’S HEALTH: How was the trip to New York for your Webster Hall performance and appearance on The Tonight Show?

LUKE GRIMES: It went really well, man! Honestly, I was a little nervous that no one was going to show up to the gig. You know, it’s New York. It’s not like I’m in Nashville or something. We had a great turnout and people were pumped. I was pumped.

MH: By the end of Yellowstone, what has Kayce learned?

LG: His big arc has been his father wanting him to step into his shoes and take over this massive ranch, which is, you know, impossible, and really the last thing on earth Kayce wants to do. He loves that way of life, but he wants a much simpler version of it. We’ve seen him struggle between his personal family and then the legacy of his larger family. This last season, he’s really had to take action, which can be uncomfortable for him.

MH: But great to watch.

LG: Right.

MH: Has playing Kayce changed how you approach anything in life?

LG: As much as I love Kayce, that’s always been the frustrating part about playing him. Deep down he’s a really good, pure soul. But the indecisiveness is incredibly frustrating for him and the people around him. Even up until last season, he spends a lot of time sitting on a porch talking about how he doesn’t know where he belongs.

I don’t feel like that as a person at all. I’ve always known what I wanted and been pretty focused. Since I was a kid, I’ve known what I’ve wanted, and I’ve been lucky to get that. Kayce has found that getting things you think you want sometimes doesn’t feel very good. And I’m glad in my life I’m not that way.

MH: Are you satisfied with where Kayce ends up after the finale?

LG: I am, I think. It’s the perfect ending. I think anyone who cares about Kayce will be very, very pleased with how everything goes. Taylor [Sheridan, Yellowstone cocreator and showrunner] is just such a good writer. He had the ending in mind from the very beginning. Sometimes it’s like he starts from the end and figures out how to get there.

MH: Kayce’s caught between two worlds: his life with his wife and daughter and being brought back into the Dutton fold. There are modern and traditional ideas of masculinity at play with him. How important was it for you to explore that kind of thing?

LG: The great thing about Kayce is he isn’t really into that old-school masculinity. He’s the vulnerable one. If you’re in a western, it’s probably way more fun to be the cool guy who doesn’t have emotions, constantly posturing, 

unbeatable in a fight, and all that kind of stuff. Kayce is destructible; he loses sometimes. That’s the much more realistic modern version of masculinity. He goes to war, but he’s not a war hero—it ruins his life, and he comes back a completely different person, and he deals with this PTSD.

It’s not fun to go into that mentally, but I think it makes him a more well-rounded, more realistic character, and probably a better role model for people going through similar things in real life. And that goes back to Taylor. Taylor loves westerns, but he’s also incredibly smart, so there’s always a little more to everything.

Top: Luke Grimes performs during Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival at The Park at Harlinsdale Farm on September 24, 2023 in Franklin, Tennessee. Bottom: L-R: Luke Grimes as Kacey Dutton and Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton on episode 512 of Paramount Network’s Yellowstone

ERIKA GOLDRING/GETTY IMAGES/ ©PARAMOUNT GLOBAL, 2024

MH: I spent a year studying in Montana and loved it. What’s it like when you’re all out there making this show?

LG: We film in this place called Bitterroot Valley, and I actually moved there four years ago. I started falling in love with it little by little, and then I started noticing it felt weird to leave and go back to Los Angeles. It’s like I slowly started switching gears. L.A. scared me to death, honestly. The big jump happened when my wife came up there with me when we did a season during the height of COVID. The options were “come the whole time or don’t come at all.” So she came; we rented a really nice house there. And we got so into it. We built a house, and it’s the best place I’ve ever lived.

I know how this sounds, but I think Montana is, in some ways, the biggest character in the show. It’s about the land. It’s about the ranch and the scenery. And that’s probably why a lot of people fell in love with the show so much. We started to get a serious audience during COVID. It was a time where everyone was locked inside, and there was something so romantic about watching a show where everyone’s on horseback looking at endless, beautiful vistas.

MH: I’ve shown pictures to friends who’ve said, “Come on, that’s fake, man.”

LG: Right. It’s like, nothing looks like that in real life. Or so I thought.

MH: I remember driving one time to get to the next town over, which was two and a half hours away—because it’s Montana, after all. Along the way, there were stops and memorials at these sites, what they call “battlefields,” where Native Americans were killed. It’s something the state doesn’t seem to shy away from. Kayce has a throughline to that through his wife, Monica, right?

LG: Yeah, exactly. It’s another reason he feels he’s between a rock and a hard place: His father isn’t very pleased that he married a Native girl. Those things are hard to touch on, even on scripted TV. There’s obviously some tribalism and racism, but Kayce doesn’t see in those terms. He just loves who he loves.

MH: It’s beautiful, but it makes things difficult.

LG: Exactly. There’s that line in the very first episode of the show where Monica’s grandfather comes to him and says, “Until they find a cure for human nature, a man must stand with his people. And we are not your people.” So he doesn't belong on the reservation. He doesn't belong on his family’s ranch. A huge part of our arc is dealing with the difference and the problems that were created hundreds of years ago. It’s heartbreaking.

MH: I know it’s being kept super secret, but you filmed a new Ari Aster movie recently, too.

LG: Man, he’s one of my favorite directors. I’m coming off this big TV show, so I have a bit of the luxury of like, Hey, I’ve never explored that before. Just see what’s out there. It might be working with a certain actor, or cast, or a director. Acting-wise, my heart’s open, mind’s open. I’m just looking for the next thing that excites me.

RUBEN CHAMORRO

MH: I remember talking to Ari Aster on the Midsommar circuit, and I asked if it felt weird to already be treated like such a big deal only two films into his career and to have those kinds of expectations lingering. He said, “All the time.”

LG: Right, and the weirdest thing on Eddington was it didn’t feel weird. I look over on one side and there’s Ari, and over on the other side there’s Joaquin Phoenix. And I’m like, “This should feel crazy to me!” Yellowstone is a huge production now. You’ve got wranglers and hundreds of cows.

MH: Hundreds of cows?

LG: Hundreds. The base camp has gotten massive. And with Ari, it was like I was doing an indie movie. It was a lot more intimate.

MH: Knowing Ari Aster, I’m assuming it’s a very different kind of western compared to Yellowstone.

LG: Absolutely. It takes place in a small town in New Mexico. Joaquin Phoenix is the sheriff of this town, but it’s set in modern day. It actually takes place during COVID, so it’s not a western in the traditional sense.

MH: Do you have any routines to preserve your mental and physical health when you’re on the road? You mentioned that things like talk shows stress you out.

LG: The touring thing is new. I’m still working it out. It’s hard to eat right when you’re on a bus, and you’re hitting cities you’ve never been to, and you’re only there for a few hours before you have to get back on the bus. It’s a totally new process I’m still learning. I will say, whenever I get a gig and I’m going to a new city, my first thing is always “I need to get a routine.” That’s what really helps me. I very quickly try to find a couple places I like to eat where I feel comfortable. I find a gym and really embrace the routine from day one.

Gyms, for me, are more about the mental aspect of it than making sure I look good with my shirt off or whatever. I mean, of course, I’d like to look good with my shirt off, but we all would. If I go a couple weeks without working out, I start to get real dark. So I have to—I just have to. I’m 40 years old now, so I know I have to get it done.

MH: Yeah. Our bodies betray us every day.

LG: Oh my god, yes, and it’s just so much easier to be unhealthy. It seems like the cards are stacked against us in modern life a little bit.

MH: What does it feel like when things get dark?

LG: It feels like I’m taking a test. I do love self-help books. I always feel really inspired when I read things like that. I’ve done therapy in the past; it’s not something I do all the time, but I always know it’s there. I’ll admit that I’m not great at meditating. It’s really hard for me to sit and close my eyes for 20 minutes. I have a really short attention span.

MH: One of the biggest headlines for Yellowstone this year was Kevin Costner leaving the show, and then his character dying and his reaction to that. Are you in touch with him at all?

LG: No, I haven’t talked to him since. It’s not a case of any hard feelings or anything; it’s just, he’s Kevin Costner. [Laughs] He’s a big deal. I do have his phone number—I just don’t feel like it’s my place to reach out. He can reach out to me if he wants to.

None of us saw it coming the way it did, and obviously there was news about possible blowups behind the scenes or whatever. But just like in life, man, these things happen, they happen fast, and they’re not predictable. I lost my father a few years ago. It happened fast, and it was not the way that you would think that that would happen. In life, these things happen and then people have to start making decisions. And in our little Yellowstone world, that helped ramp the show up into a boil.

RUBEN CHAMORRO

MH: You’ve got this album, you’ve got this big acclaimed series, an Ari Aster movie under your belt, major parts before in movies like American Sniper and the Magnificent Seven remake. Do you start to think about the superhero movie phone ringing at some point and locking in a Marvel paycheck?

LG: No, man. That sounds like no fun to me at all. No judgment whatsoever for anyone who does that, but I just don’t know if I have the personality for it, to be honest. I’m sure my agents are going to be really mad at me for saying that. But to wear tights in front of a green screen for a few months, and then travel all over the world doing the talk shows that make me nervous for a few months—it kind of sounds like hell.

I like writing songs. I like acting. I’m going to try my best to just keep doing those things. And hopefully I’m allowed to keep doing those things. I have a kid now [Grimes’s first child, a boy, was born in October 2024], so I’m sure that at some point I’ll have to do some things for money. I’m just hoping and praying that I can continue to be in stuff that I’m proud of.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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