"Western gangster thing": When Tulsa King's creative team took us inside the set of the Taylor Sheridan crime drama

Taylor Sheridan’s hit crime drama series Tulsa King, starring Sylvester Stallone, takes organized crime to an unlikely location in middle America. Tulsa King follows the story of Dwight “The General” Manfredi (played by Stallone), who is released from prison after 25 years. He is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, by his boss to oversee his criminal operations in the religion. Leaving his Brooklyn roots behind, Dwight learns to conduct business in the new town, where he faces unexpected challenges.

Tyson Mitchell (played by Jay Will) becomes closely associated with Dwight in Tulsa. While speaking about making Tulsa King, Jay Will said in a Paramount+ special,

"It is different. It is like a Western gangster thing going on. It is exciting. It is new and it is fresh."

Taylor Sheridan, creator and Executive Producer of the show, said,

“I actually wanted to work with Sylvester Stallone for a while. This was an idea that I had the gangster being sent from New York to middle America to establish the mob’s influence in that area. What an absurd comedy of errors that would be.”

About shooting the show in Oklahoma, Terence Winter, showrunner and Executive Producer on the show, said,

“Everybody responds to the mob genre and taking that idea and those characters and placing them in a place where you’d never encounter them, it might as well be another planet…Filming in Oklahoma, everything is different.”

Garrett Hedlund, who plays Mitch Keller, added,

“It’s the epitome of country.”

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What is Tulsa King about?

The crime drama series follows Dwight “The General” Manfredi, who was behind bars for 25 years. After his release, his boss instructs him to head to Tulsa, where he is expected to carry out the criminal venture. Despite not knowing anyone in the new town, Dwight focuses on getting a new crew and building the empire himself with unlikely associates and allies. He starts distancing himself from his mob family when he gets suspicious of them.

Sylvester Stallone spoke about his character,

“He kept his mouth shut for 25 years, no one could believe it. Coming out he expected to be rewarded but he is sent to Tulsa… welcome to rural America… He is building a whole new family…they are not gangsters. They are just everyday people and that’s a whole different paradigm…He starts to bring together these groups of misfits…there will be moments of will he go gangster on you. Yes definitely and that’s where the fun begins.”

Tulsa King was created by Taylor Sheridan with Sylvester Stallone in his first lead role in a television series. The cast of the series includes Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, Vincent Piazza, Jay Will, A.C. Peterson, and Garrett Hedlund. The third season of the series is currently in production at Paramount +.

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