Director of John’s death scene and Beth’s screams

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for Yellowstone Season 5, Episode 9, “Desire Is All You Need.”.”

Sunday’s episode of “Yellowstone” changed the game when patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) was killed off after the actor decided not to return to the show. As shocking as the event was, the aftermath shapes the entire season.

Director Christina Alexandra Voros spoke diversity about the intense emotions evoked while filming the episode, how the crew supports the cast on complicated filming days, and what sequel series “The Madison” will have in common with “Yellowstone.”

There was a long time between filming the first and second half of season five, and Kevin Costner also left the series before filming the second half. What was the mood on set when everyone got back together for the first time?

It was kind of awesome. We’ve all been together as a family for so long, and then we had this long break between the strike and Kevin and everything. I think everyone was very excited to be together again, but also a huge sense of obligation as storytellers. I think by the time everyone was done with the show, everyone was tired and wanted to go back to their families and get on with their lives. But when so much time had passed, everyone was really happy to be together again in the same beautiful place – summer in Montana – and to be able to tell this amazing story. It was pretty wonderful.

What was the biggest challenge in the long period between filming the two parts of the season?

We are very lucky that it really is a big family. There are people who have been on the show every day since the first season, so there’s a huge shortcut. It’s not as hard to get back into it as you might think because we’ve all been doing it for so long. It’s muscle memory.

I think the challenge this year is that the lyrics were so ambitious and resonant and deep and hard. The actors had to go to places they had never been before this season, and that demanded a lot from all of them. There were seasons when the fireworks consisted of exploding objects, shootings, and horses falling down the mountain. This season’s fireworks are truly emotional and performance-oriented. The cast left everything on the floor. One of the highlights of my career was seeing some of Wes’ performances [Bentley] and Cole [Hauser] and Kelly [Reilly] and Luke [Grimes] gave the show this season. It’s simply breathtaking.

Kelly’s screams during this episode were so primal. How did you both talk about these scenes that took so much out of her emotionally?

My creative relationship with Kelly is one of the things I value most in my career as a storyteller. She always brings it with her. I don’t think anyone knows how hard she works, how deep she searches, how vulnerable she allows herself to be. But I also think there is a deep trust in her fellow actors and the crew. There is trust that she will be cared for and given the space she needs to achieve such a feat. There is a tremendous amount of communication.

My first AD, Kether Abeles, is a master at designing schedules to protect actors and help them conserve their resources. It’s a holistic approach to building a season, with much of it based on the emotional demands placed on the actors. Let’s rehearse, let’s get everything set up, let’s wait until the light is perfect, let’s know exactly where the cameras are moving for the second setup, let’s get all our focus markers ready. Then it’s almost like Tai Chi – you move from one place and everyone knows where they’re going. Everything’s very calm, not, “Oh my God… We have to do this before the sun goes down.” You can’t do that in a scene like that and get that performance. You must set the table for this service to be brought to you.

How did you decide how much of the crime scene to show with John’s body?

I can’t talk to him William Earl Taylor [Sheridan]I was worried when I wrote it, but what I’m trying to say is that it was definitely a decision to acknowledge that death becomes real when you see the impact it has on the people still living lives are. You could take a three-minute shot of a body on the floor, and that would mean less than 30 seconds of Kelly’s face looking at that body. The emotional impact of death is more interesting than death itself, and I think that can be said about the entire season.

You could have done a whole season asking, “Oh, how is John Dutton going to disappear?” Or you could leave in the first five minutes, and then we know that no one knows what’s going to happen next. There are so many other questions left that need to be answered. I was shocked when I first read the script, but then when I saw where he was going with the rest of the season, it made so much sense. It was such a brave step. It left so much more room for the characters and the actors portraying those characters to really grow into the truest, purest versions of themselves – the strongest, but also the most vulnerable. The juxtaposition in these flashbacks as we see how life faced the harsh reality of this new paradigm is a wonderfully intricate way to deepen the impact of this loss. I think the audience will be a little unhinged, much like the characters being unhinged.

They are also working on the Yellowstone series sequel The Madison. What could “Yellowstone” fans look forward to from this show?

It’s a completely different story. The commonality is the landscape. We’re in Montana, but it’s viewed through a completely different lens, so it feels like another facet of that cut stone that’s been polished. There are parallels in the scale of the landscape and the place of humans in that space, but you look at it from a completely different perspective.

This interview has been edited and condensed.