The Taylor Sheridan universe is rapidly expanding, thanks to the latest title in the catalog, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which has become another mega-hit for fans of cowboy hats and horses.
Lawmen tells the story of Bass Reeves, one of the first Black U.S. Marshals, played by David Oyelowo. The series pulled in some massive ratings, and Oyelowo is giving all of the credit to Taylor Sheridan.
In a new interview with The Wrap, Oyelowo credits the showrunner for paving the way for more Western-inspired stories, and how that opened up for more representation. He said, ” I mean, the amazing thing about what he has been able to build with Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, that audience, the tone that he’s created, it laid the groundwork for a show like Bass Reeves being able to exist because the idea of doing this show has been with me since the project was brought to me in 2014, and we went out with it in 2015. The entire industry – cable networks, studios, they all turned it down,” Oyelowo admitted. “Streaming didn’t even exist then. That’s how long we’ve been trying to get this done. And then in 2017, they all turned it down again,” he said.
It took Sheridan to step in and find a place on TV in order to make room for more stories like Lawmen. Oyelowo continued:
And then along comes Taylor Sheridan and this underserved audience who love westerns, who love the tone of what he’s doing, who love the fact that he’s looking at this place in America that you could argue had become ignored in contemporaneous TV and film. And that gave us the platform, that gave us the foundation. Chad Feehan, to your point about the Yellowstone universe, I was always very keen that it stood apart from that, and there is such appetite for that, that people were keen for it to be another offshoot. But to me, that would be a diminishment of the fact that Bass was a real guy. And Yellowstone though, I’m sure based on some truth out there in terms of what goes on in that place, is not, that emanated from Taylor’s mind.
This needed to be different, but they shared DNA, especially with 1883. I remember seeing that and thinking, Whoa, now I have a very clear vision of what “Bass Reeves” could be. I hadn’t seen anything like that from an episodic standpoint, from a scope and scale standpoint in recent history that was so in line with my personal vision and ambition for the show. And again, I would say he laid the groundwork for us to build upon.
Of course, he couldn’t talk about a Sheridan show without mentioning the elephant in the room. Sheridan’s mega-popular series Yellowstone has a reputation for being popular with a particular group of people. “I think that’s one thing that would be universally agreed is that Lawmen: Bass Reeves was not a MAGA show,” Oyelowo said.
Lawmen has been doing well even without having a direct connection to Yellowstone, with 7.5 million viewers in its first week alone. If you need a good way to bond with your father or distant uncle over the holidays, now is the time to watch!
You can stream the entire first season of Lawmen on Paramount+.