Tim McGraw Agreed To Star In Yellowstone's 1883 Under One Condition

The Paramount Network series "Yellowstone" has, over the course of its four seasons, become one of its most popular hits. Fans of the series were thus excited to learn that a prequel had been greenlit by the network, with "Yellowstone" co-creator Taylor Sheridan, who previously penned films such as "Sicario" and "Wind River," serving as the sole creator this time around, marking his second collaboration with the streaming service Paramount+, after the crime drama "Mayor of Kingstown," which Sheridan also co-created.

The show, titled "1883," follows the ancestors of the Dutton family, who are the focus of "Yellowstone," and stars Sam Elliott, Billy Bob Thornton, LaMonica Garrett, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill. Their characters journey from Texas to Montana, coming across all kinds of treacherous threats, to lay claim to what would eventually become the Dutton Ranch. Fans of "Yellowstone" know all too well the kinds of headaches that accompany owning a piece of property that large in the modern era, and if the modern-day Duttons thought they had it bad, James (McGraw) and Margaret (Hill) are about to show the world how much worse it can get. 

There have been numerous reasons for fans to get excited, from the time period to the pedigree of creator Taylor Sheridan. However, above all else, this show has one of the most stellar casts in any modern-day drama, especially when it comes to the casting of real-life couple McGraw and Hill. In a recent interview, McGraw revealed that the cast of the show could have looked quite different if a certain stipulation hadn't been met. This is the one condition under which McGraw agreed to star in "1883."

Tim McGraw is country music royalty, with Faith Hill as his queen. The two have been married since 1996 and have three children together, so they have one of the longest-running marriages in the entertainment industry, by far. While the two have shared the stage plenty of times in the past, they've surprisingly never acted together despite both of them having rather extensive filmographies.

In an interview with the YouTube channel DC Film Girl, Tim McGraw was asked about the fact that both he and his wife Faith Hill are in the series, with the interviewer wondering if that was part of the stipulation for him doing the show in the first place. McGraw replied that the end result was the same, but the route was different.

"We had done a flashback scene or two for 'Yellowstone's' last season, and that was how this whole idea came about of doing the prequel series," McGraw clarified. "And so, once we had done the flashback sequence, we were sort of married to each other, so to speak, as it were anyway."

"But when it came time to do this show, we were definitely going to do it together, period," the singer-actor continued. "We loved the writing so much, and there was no way we were going to do it separately. But I think they were kind of stuck with us anyway."

The writing was of utmost importance to getting the couple involved, as a separate interview attests.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are megastars in their respective genres, so it's a big deal for them to star in "1883" together. Undoubtedly, other projects must have come along over the years with various movies and TV shows wanting the power couple to hop aboard. What about "1883" was different from all of those? 

In a separate interview with DC Film Girl, the host has a chance to speak with Faith Hill, and she asks what made her want to play Margaret Dutton. Hill succinctly replied, "The writing." Taylor Sheridan does the bulk of the writing on both "Yellowstone" and "1883," and he has numerous other Westerns and neo-Westerns to his name. He's one of the most prominent writers in Hollywood right now, so it makes sense McGraw and Hill would want to hitch their wagon, metaphorically speaking, to the artist. 

Hill goes on to elaborate, "It's one of the best things I've ever read. Truthfully, and yeah, that was really it. It was the writing, the story of this family." It'll be interesting to see how the tale of James and Margaret influences the modern-day story of "Yellowstone." But for now, you can see how McGraw and Hill's real-life relationship translates onscreen when the first season of "1883" continues on Sundays on Paramount+.