Luke Grimes Admits He Was Scared Of Riding Horses The First Couple Years Of Filming Yellowstone

Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) has been a mainstay of Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone" since the very first episode, though he's certainly changed quite a bit since his first appearance in the series. When we first met Kayce back in Season 1, the former U.S. Navy Seal had become estranged from his father, John Dutton (Kevin Costner), and was struggling to make ends meet working on the Broken Rock Indian Reservation, having previously been ousted from the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch by his father.

Flash forward to Season 5, and Kayce Dutton is almost unrecognizable. Throughout the past four seasons, he's worked his way back up to the top of the food chain within Yellowstone Ranch — eventually supplanting Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) as the ranch's foreman. With each passing season, Kayce has slowly become increasingly engrossed in the aggressive, dangerous lifestyle inherent to those who work across the Dutton's ranch — and engaged in his fair share of felonious activities along the way.

Indeed, there have been plenty of times throughout the series where Kayce Dutton seems to perfectly embody the grittiness of a cowboy from the Yellowstone ranch — which is why it might surprise some fans to learn that Luke Grimes himself was actually scared of riding horses during his first few years on "Yellowstone."

During an interview on "Live with Kelly and Ryan," Luke Grimes confessed that he had never actually ridden a horse prior to joining the cast of "Yellowstone." In fact, Grimes admitted that he was actually terrified of horses when he first started training to prepare for "Yellowstone."

"I was scared for like the first two years," Grimes said. "You know, it's got a mind of its own. There's some close calls, you get a little scared. But now ... you just can't worry about it." Grimes went on to say that if the rider is worried, the horse will sense that worry, and the whole ride will go awry, as horses are easily spooked. Considering the sheer amount of time that Kayce Dutton — and nearly every character in Yellowstone, for that matter — spends atop a horse, it's very surprising indeed to hear Grimes was terrified of the animals for so long.

That being said, it's interesting that Grimes' own work with horses has somewhat paralleled the work of Kayce Dutton on the Yellowstone ranch, as both have become more accustomed to their surroundings and the demands of everyday life on the ranch. For Kayce, that meant overcoming his feud with his father and accepting the brutal life inherent to the Dutton family ranch. In Grimes' case, however, that meant learning to feel comfortable when riding a horse.