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Taylor Sheridan‘s The Madison featured a dedication to Robert Redford after a surprise connection that can be traced back to Yellowstone.
A tribute to Redford was included at the end of the Saturday, March 14, premiere. While Redford seemingly didn’t have any involvement with The Madison before his death in September 2025, he has played a role in Sheridan’s career.
While reflecting on the Yellowstone legacy in June 2023, Sheridan, 55, told The Hollywood Reporter in a profile that he originally pitched the show as a movie. Sheridan referred to it as “The Godfather in Montana” before it ended up in series development at HBO. At the time, Sheridan recalled HBO executives not supporting Kevin Costner in the main role as John Dutton.
“They said, ‘We want Robert Redford,’” he shared. “They said, ‘If you can get us Robert Redford, we’ll greenlight the pilot.’”
Sheridan then went to visit Redford — and convinced him to join the show.
“I drive to Sundance and spend the day with him and he agrees to play John Dutton,” Sheridan continued. “I call the senior vice president in charge of production and say, ‘I got him!’ ‘You got who?’ ‘Robert Redford.’ ‘What?!’ ‘You said if I got Robert Redford, you’d greenlight the show.’”
Sheridan continued: “And he says — and you can’t make this s*** up — ‘We meant a Robert Redford type.’“
Yellowstone ultimately landed at Paramount Network and aired for five seasons with Costner, 71, in the main role. Sheridan, meanwhile, didn’t end up working with Redford before his death at age 89.
The tribute in The Madison comes as Sheridan is celebrating another career win. After becoming a household name for Yellowstone, which aired from 2018 to 2024, Sheridan created prequels 1883 and 1923 as well as the spinoffs The Dutton Ranch and Marshals.
Sheridan has also worked on original shows Landman, Mayor of Kingstown, Lioness and Tulsa King. News broke in October 2025 that Sheridan closed a major with NBCUniversal. The five-year overall deal for film, TV and streaming will begin January 1, 2029, after Sheridan’s TV deal with Paramount — which goes through 2028 — officially ends.
Paramount will retain the rights to Yellowstone and the other franchises Sheridan created under his deal with the company, so he is expected to create brand new IP for NBCUniversal. Sheridan’s move came after Paramount’s recent merger with Skydance.
“I spent the first 37 years of my life compromising. When I quit acting, I decided that I am going to tell my stories my way, period,” Sheridan told THR in the 2023 profile. “If you don’t want me to tell them, fine. Give them back and I’ll find someone who does — or I won’t, and then I’ll read them in some freaking dinner theater. But I won’t compromise. There is no compromising.”
Sheridan expressed gratitude to Paramount for supporting his ideas.
“Because Paramount trusts me and gives me the time to go shoot 10 to 14 days for a television episode, we can treat it like a movie, and it looks like a movie,” he told Deadline in January 2022. “We can take the time to rehearse it and light it and build these set pieces. And if I call them and say, ‘I need two helicopters in one day,’ they just go, ‘Alright.’”
He added: “At the end of the day, to go to some of these locations where most people have never been, where you’re opening up a new world, and all of these places or characters in the story, to me, it’s fascinating.”
The Madison continues on Paramount+ Saturday, March 21.
