Tim McGraw is grateful for his Taylor Sheridan show experience, but he’ll be the first to admit that the grueling shooting process for the Yellowstone spinoff 1883 pushed him to his limit.
It’s been almost five years since Tim McGraw and Faith Hill starred as James and Margaret Dutton in a spinoff that showcased the original Dutton family and their story. 1883 is one of the highest rated and critically acclaimed series that Sheridan has ever done, and McGraw still talks about his role at the Dutton family patriarch.
Probably because he remembers it like it was yesterday.
The country music star has described the not-so-cushy shooting style of Sheridan’s on multiple occasions. Days in front of the camera often stretched upwards of 14-hours, and the cast and crew of the spinoff worked six days out of the week to get the show filmed and out to the masses a bit quicker. McGraw was also touring during that time, and was making trips while shooting to still play music for his fans.
He told Esquire that all of that together really took a toll:
“I learned a lot, certainly because it was such a tough shoot. I think we shot for right around six months. It was a long shoot. Five or six months. It was close to it. And we shot mostly six days a week, and like 14 hours a day.
And during that time, I had a handful of shows that I had to do. So, there were times that I would finish up around 6 o’clock in the evening, jump on a plane, go do a show and then get home at one in the morning, then be in the gym at 3 a.m. and be in the makeup chair at 5:30 or 6. So, I had a few of those.”
Yeah, a schedule like that will run down even the most resilient.
Though it was quite the challenging test to juggle all of those things at once, McGraw cherished his time working with Sheridan, and says he learned a lot while fulfilling his role as James Dutton:
“It was tough, but it was worth it because we were getting to work together, and we were getting to work with Taylor, who was fantastic, and, like I said, a brilliant writer.
The elements were always fighting us, and you were working with animals, and you were working with extras, and you were working with horses, which I grew up riding horses, so it was fun for me.
But I think I learned more than anything is there’s so much value in preparing. And the more you prepare and the more you’re ready to do what you’re going to do, it takes away a lot of the nervousness.”
Plus, McGraw had the benefit of going through everything alongside his wife, Faith Hill, who played his on-screen wife in 1883.
That helped McGraw tremendously, but it didn’t make the job any easier. He remembers telling his country music star wife that, of all the jobs he’s ever had in his life, playing James Dutton on 1883 might have been the hardest he’s ever had:
“I told Faith it was probably the hardest job we’ve ever had. I had some hard jobs growing up… if it had gone on any longer, I probably wouldn’t have survived, put it that way.”