Sylvester Stallone said Hollywood abandoned Middle America, and credited Taylor Sheridan with finding the audience studios had long overlooked. The actor made the remarks on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, in a conversation that spread widely after Fox News reported it on November 5. Stallone, who stars in Sheridan’s Tulsa King, said the viewers Sheridan reached had been waiting for stories about their own part of the country.
“It’s very, very important because that audience was ignored for centuries, it seems, since John Wayne,” Stallone said. “And he really mined a consciousness like, ‘Oh, we forgot about that guy in the middle of America.’ They’re always writing about California and New York.” The remarks were Stallone’s own assessment, not a claim backed by viewing figures, and they were reported as his view of how Hollywood picks its stories.
Sylvester Stallone on Taylor Sheridan and Yellowstone
Sheridan created Yellowstone, the ranch drama that grew into a television empire for Paramount. Sylvester Stallone said Sheridan understood the appeal of traditional American storytelling, where loyalty, toughness and personal confrontations often drive the action. Sheridan has said HBO executives rejected his original vision for Yellowstone, with one executive reported to have complained that the project felt too focused on Middle America. Sheridan refused to change the concept and found a home for it at Paramount.
“But the middle America, it’s a different vibe,” Stallone said. “And so people were starving for it. It’s like a simpler world and more, I would just say, confrontational.” Sylvester Stallone argued that Hollywood had become so focused on stories set in California and New York that it had neglected the rest of the country. Sheridan, he suggested, built his success by giving that forgotten audience the stories it had been missing.
Sylvester Stallone found a new television audience of his own in Tulsa King, which debuted in 2022 on Paramount+. He plays Dwight Manfredi, a New York capo sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to build a criminal empire after serving 25 years in prison. The show became one of the streamer’s strongest word-of-mouth hits, and its third season began on September 28. Stallone had said he only wanted to do two seasons at most, then changed his mind once the show took off.
Sylvester Stallone says streaming moves faster
Stallone said streaming gave shows like Sheridan’s a speed that film and network television could not match. “But the beauty of streaming is they’re fast, and they’re nimble, and they can really put a show on the air in a matter of weeks,” he said. That speed, in his view, lets a show reach an audience before the moment passes. Sylvester Stallone added that he does not think Hollywood has caught up when it comes to film-making and what Middle America might want to see on the big screen.
The comments from Sylvester Stallone fit a wider pattern in which Sheridan’s programmes have drawn heartland audiences that Stallone says studios had previously overlooked. Yellowstone and its prequels built a large following outside the coastal cities, and Tulsa King placed Stallone himself in Oklahoma, a setting far from the New York and Los Angeles stories that dominate most drama. The shows share a tone Stallone described as direct and confrontational, with characters who settle matters face to face rather than through institutions.
What Sheridan built from the gap
Sheridan’s run of series now includes Yellowstone, its prequels, Tulsa King and other dramas built around regional American life. Sylvester Stallone’s point was that none of it required a new audience to be created. The viewers were already there, watching little that spoke to them, until a writer built shows around the places they lived. His own career gives him a long view of that gap: he broke through with Rocky in 1976, a film about a Philadelphia club fighter, and his early struggle to get it made is now the subject of I Play Rocky, a biographical drama that opened in limited release on November 6.
Sylvester Stallone made the remarks during an appearance on The Rest Is Entertainment. The episode circulated after Fox News published its account on November 5, and other outlets picked up the quotes the same week. Tulsa King continues on Paramount+, with Stallone still in the lead role he once planned to leave after two seasons.