Taylor Sheridan never minced words, but if you thought his Kevin Costner feud was brutal, his Yellowstone track record with vegans was something else. The man practically turned plant-based diets into villain-origin stories.
Be it cattle ranchers staring down tofu enthusiasts or cowboy wisdom dismissing quinoa like it was a personal insult, Sheridan’s scripts never missed a chance to remind audiences where his loyalties lay.
If Costner got heat, vegans got the full-blown wildfire.
Taylor Sheridan vs. vegans: The Yellowstone creator’s no-nonsense take on ethical eating
Taylor Sheridan never held back – be it his Kevin Costner drama or his stance on vegans. He went all in on the plant-based crowd, making it clear he found their ethical arguments “preposterous.”
The man behind Yellowstone, a series practically built on cattle ranching, laid out his case. Farming wasn’t bloodless. Plowing fields meant destruction.
If you’ve watched Yellowstone, this shouldn’t be surprising. One of its most famous scenes involved John Dutton educating Summer Higgins on why skipping steak wasn’t exactly a moral high ground. Turns out, that moment wasn’t just for show; Sheridan felt the same way in real life.
His argument? Nature itself didn’t do veganism. Check out his full quote below (via Whiskey Riff):
I think one of the most absurd positions anyone can take, is they’re a vegan for an ethical reason. It’s preposterous. You can do it for a medical reason. I don’t know what that reason would be, maybe you can’t process meat and can’t process proteins like that. But to do it for an ethical reason is absurd.
And the reason I say that is I have plowed a field. It is carnage. It is 12-feet of carnage. And every single plant that you eat is going to be tilled into the ground at some capacity. So you’re gonna kill everything…People have to understand, you have to take ownership.
Sheridan continued,
If you look anywhere in the ecosystem, take man out of it. Virtually everything is living at the expense of another organism, to the degree that if a certain weed grows up over the grass it’s killing the grass.
This little sapling grows up over the grass, it’s killing the grass.
If the grass grows up before the weeds, it kills the weeds… there is not a vegan fish, there’s not a vegetarian fish. Every fish, every frog, they’re eating another organism to survive. Every one of them.
Unlike many Hollywood elites, Sheridan wasn’t just playing cowboy. He owned a massive Texas ranch and knew exactly what it took to raise livestock. Yellowstone didn’t just look authentic; it was authentic.
So, if Kevin Costner got some heat behind the scenes, vegans got an outright bonfire. And Taylor Sheridan stood firm, steak knife in hand.
Taylor Sheridan’s Sicario standoff: The brutal ending he refused to change
![Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) [Credit Lionsgate Films]](https://fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/21085630/Sicario-Day-of-the-Soldado-2018-Credit-Lionsgate-Films-1024x768.jpeg "“It’s preposterous”: If You Think Taylor Sheridan Hated Kevin Costner, His ‘Yellowstone’ Was a Personal Vendetta Against Vegans He Absolutely Cherished 5")
Taylor Sheridan has the power to call the shots now, but back in 2015, things were different. Fresh off Sons of Anarchy and stepping behind the camera for the first time, he wasn’t exactly playing it safe. His first major Hollywood gamble? Writing Sicario – a film that still stands as his best work he didn’t direct.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Sheridan clashed with producers over the film’s brutal ending. They wanted a softer Alejandro Gillick, one who might spare Fausto Alarcon’s family. Sheridan wasn’t having it.
Speaking to Uproxx in 2016, he recalled how his original version played out:
It was a different violence. In the original, what Alejandro did was simply torture Fausto Alarcon in front of his family. Then, essentially, he told the wife to take the children far away. Raise them to be doctors or lawyers and not drug dealers so he doesn’t have to come back and kill them.
The final cut? Far less forgiving – exactly as Sheridan intended.
Yellowstone is available to watch on Peacock & Apple TV.
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