Luke Grimes stars as Kayce Dutton in the final season of Yellowstone, now streaming on the Paramount Network. The series chronicles the trials of the Dutton family, led by John Dutton (Kevin Costner), who controls the largest contiguous ranch in the United States. Costner is, famously, not returning for the series’ final episodes, but Grimes reteams with his co-stars Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, Cole Hauser and Kelsey Asbille. The series’ season five premiere brought in nearly 16 million viewers, making it the most-watched show on television for all of 2022. Grimes recently wrapped production on writer/director Ari Aster’s next project, Eddington, for A24 opposite Joaquin Phoenix (“one of my acting heroes,” says Grimes), Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal.
When Yellowstone took a long hiatus, Grimes stayed busy with his music career. Blending elements of country, folk and Americana, Grimes released his self-titled debut album in 2024. The Dayton, Ohio, native and his wife, Brazilian model Bianca Rodrigues Grimes, recently welcomed a baby boy. For the past seven years, the couple has shuttled between Montana (where the series films) and Nashville, but now that the show is over, Grimes is writing a second album and headed across the country on his “Playin’ on the Tracks” tour, which kicked off in November. We caught up with the actor and musician before he hit the road.
You’ve been married to Bianca since 2018. How has it been to have been with someone since breaking out on the show?
I felt like my life really started when I met her—it sounds cheesy but it’s true. I know where my priorities lie now and what’s most important and I get to enjoy my career more because I take it a lot less seriously now.
You recently had your first child. How has it been to become a parent? Is there anything you learned from the show about parenthood?
I think the hardest thing to relate to with Kayce was the fact that he was a dad, because I wasn’t one, so there was a lot of me asking my friends who are fathers how certain things made them feel. Taylor [Sheridan, the show’s creator] is such a good writer that it made it a lot easier to play the role on the show, but in no way did that actually prepare me for fatherhood.
You’ve played Kayce for seven years. How have you approached this part?
I think Kayce was sort of the outsider of the family. He’s dealing with a lot of demons—it’s not super fun to be the guy in the Western who’s feeling his feelings all the time, so there’s a challenge to that, but I fell in love with him. He’s a good heart and a good soul and he is trying to do the right thing, so for me it was always justifiable playing Kayce.
Who in the cast are you closest with outside of work?
Definitely Kelsey, who plays my wife—there’s a lot of different worlds on this show, and we kind of had our own, so we spent a lot of time together. Really since Day 1 we got along really well. I’ve said it before, she’s the coolest actress I’ve ever worked with—she’s so good at what she does and so easy to work with.
What will you miss most about the show?
Well, I don’t have to miss the location luckily because I live there now. I’ll miss the cast and crew, I’ll miss playing Kayce, I’ll miss the world and the imaginary ranching work of it all. Some of the relationships I made on this show are really special and I think they will last a long time.
What was it like returning to the set in Montana without having Kevin Costner there?
It was something we all knew was going to happen at some point in the story—just narratively, there had to be a moment where we would see if the family could keep the ranch without the patriarch. I don’t think we expected it to happen this way, but it’s an ensemble cast; there were enough people carrying the weight [that] I don’t think it will affect how the audience sees the story. It was definitely different without him. Kevin is an icon, but we’re all professionals, it didn’t really affect how we did our jobs.
What’s your favorite memory from set?
Something that always comes to mind when I think about that is the days when we’d do the cattle drive scenes and we’re cowboyed up. There’s no way to fake that, you just have to do it—so we’d all be on horseback and in our cowboy gear, you’re somewhere gorgeous and the sun is setting and you’re running out of time because you’re losing the light, so everyone is gunning around. There’s some beautiful chaos there—in those moments it feels like you’re really cowboying, which is not something a lot of people get to experience. Those days made me feel really lucky.