Before Yellowstone, Kevin Costner starred in westerns with Bill Paxton

For whatever reason, people in the film and television industry seem inclined to hand Kevin Costner a ten-gallon hat and put him on a horse. Well, to be honest, the director of Dances With Wolves is often cast as a cowboy, as was the case with his feature directorial ventures Open Range and Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 .In fact, you can trace the Yellowstone veteran’s association with the western genre back to the early days of his career when he starred in Lawrence Kasdan’s Oscar-nominated 1985 Silverado The duo’s reunion nearly a decade later on Wyatt Earp didn’t fare so well in comparison, though Costner has always defended the three-hour epic.

Amusingly, Kasdan’s 1994 film (which also made the ill-advised move of coming out just six months after George P. Kosmatas’ shotgun, Wyatt Earp-centric classic Tombstone ) isn’t even Costner’s longest stay in theaters. Old West. That would be The Hatfields & McCoys, the three-part 2012 History Channel miniseries that reunited Costner with his Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Aquaworld co-star Kevin Reynolds. In addition to being the project that finally freed Reynolds from directorial prison following 2006’s Tristan and Isolde (period piece which failed despite Sir Ridley Scott’s name being prominently attached as producer), the dramatization of Hetfield and McCoy’s infamous feud, also saw Costner take on another actor who just looks—and sounds—just plain in a cowboy hat: the late, great Bill Paxton.

Ironically, Costner himself, a Western staple, “was born downtown, in Compton, California,” as he explained Collider while promoting “Hatfields & McCoys” in a 2012 interview. According to the Oscar winner, you can draw a straight line between his personal love of the genre and his experience watching John Ford, Henry Hathaway’s Jimmy Stewart in a Canoe and George Marshall’s stunning 1962 Western How the West Was. Won” when he was only seven years old. This, in turn, fueled his love of US history, so he knew all about the bloody, brutal, years-long conflict between the Hatfields and McCoy long before signing on for Reynolds’ miniseries.

The actor just continued to explore the events that led to William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield and Randolph “Randall” McCoy (played by Costner and Paxton in “The Hatfields and McCoys”) — and their respective clans — moving on from dear friends to bitter enemies since the end of the US Civil War after joining the show. Based on his reading, Costner attributed this more to generational trauma and “incredible anger” after the war than to resentment between the Hatfield and McCoy patriarchs. You can probably also trust that this man knows what he’s talking about, given his thorough preparation for the role. That extended to choosing the right hat for Devil Anse, a process that Costner told Collider was “a very big deal.”

Hatfields & McCoys (which Costner also produced) was relatively raved about by critics, though they thought it was too jaw-dropping for its own good. Willa Paskin, write for salonwas in complete agreement with this sentiment, writing, “It has law and lawlessness that are revealed against a background of filth, guts, and sharp voices, but it’s all presented without humor and filled with seriousness.” Regardless, huge audiences tuned in to see Costner and Paxton throw dirt in each other’s faces, and the miniseries premiere became the most-watched non-sports telecast in ad-supported cable television history at the time and in comfortable setting record for the History Channel.

it turns out Kevin Costner and TV Westerns are a dynamite ratings combination – who knew?