Sylvester Stallone, left, and Samuel L. Jackson, right, in a scene from Tulsa King.Brian Douglas/Paramount+/Supplied
Sylvester Stallone returned to streaming Sunday night with a third season of Tulsa King, the hit crime drama in which he plays an aging mobster named Dwight Manfredi building a new criminal empire in Oklahoma.
While the show is part of producer Taylor Sheridan’s expansive Paramount+ television universe (Lioness, Landman), it is also a very personal project for the 79-year-old Stallone; he’s an executive producer and writer on the show, and his wife and a daughter are involved.
The Globe and Mail spoke to the Rocky icon over Zoom about having his family on set – and why he’s working as one of President Donald Trump’s special ambassadors to keep Hollywood shooting close to home.
Paramount+ just announced that Tulsa King is already renewed for a fourth season. Your character talks about his reasons for not retiring on the show. What makes you want to stick around?.
I’ve been able to take the maturity of acting – and have gone through what I call the physical phase, the narcissistic phase, the vanity phase. Now that ship has sailed and, you know, you’re acting now with your clothes on. So it’s more emotional and I’m enjoying really delving down into those suppressed feelings. I don’t like to over-intellectualize acting because I think it sounds a bit pretentious, but I’m using a different segment of my brain, which I’ve never used before in acting.
You have writing credits on five episodes this season. Can you tell me about your involvement in the writer’s room?
The writing is very personal. I don’t know if I’ve ever even said this: I don’t think I’ve said five lines in my entire career that I haven’t written.
The only movie I can remember not rewriting anything was Cop Land. But other than that I just feel I have a certain speech pattern; the way I think, and my sense of humour, I’m better off taking what’s there and making it like a custom suit.
From left to right, Frank Grillo, Garrett Hedlund, Sylvester Stallone and Martin Starr in a scene from Tulsa King.Steve Swisher/Paramount+/Supplied
Are you primarily involved in crafting your own dialogue – or do you write other aspects of the series as well?
Yeah – crafting dialogue, adding to plot, figuring out finales. Then actually, you know, working with the directors to choreograph certain scenes. I’ve been fortunate enough to do enough films that I have a real strength, especially in action areas, which are very complicated. We only have like two days on a TV show, on what normally in a film would be a seven-day shoot. So that all that prior experience comes in handy.
Dwight was held at gunpoint by an unseen person at the end of Season 2. Did you know it was going to be an FBI agent at the time, or did you come up with that between seasons?
We had to come up with the actual actor. We had some trouble. This is inside stuff for you: We hired another actor and it just didn’t work. He couldn’t remember his lines and it was just a disaster, his first day. We’re watching money fly out the door and everyone’s starting to lose their mojo, their enthusiasm. So, we had to shut down, move over, do a couple of other scenes, find another actor and get him up to speed – because he opens up with a four-page monologue. In a feature, that would have been a disaster. In our business, this is normal operating procedure. You have to be able to pivot quickly.
As executive producer, how hands on do you get? Do you get involved in casting?
Everything. Casting is really important. I like casting, because it’s like a team: One player that stumbles along brings down the entire rhythm. As soon as Robert Patrick [playing antagonist Jeremiah Dunmire this season] walks on the screen, “Done – audition no more people. That’s it, shop closed.” You just have to go with that real, as they say, gut instinct.
Samuel L. Jackson in a scene from Tulsa King.Brian Douglas/Paramount+/Supplied
You’ve got family involved in Tulsa King – your wife, Jennifer, is an executive producer; your daughter Scarlet Rose plays Spencer. What is it like having them around at work?
It really gets the heart rate up in a good sense. You have the people that you love, the people that you’re working for, people that are working for you. What tears families apart is this separation for months and months and months. You come back home, and you go, “Hi, remember me? My name’s Sly.” You know it’s like a reacquainting period. I did that so many years, and I never want to do it again.
You’ve recently been appointed as a special ambassador to Hollywood where you advocate for shooting TV and film in the United States instead of outside of the country. Can you tell me why you’re passionate about that?
Well, I’m passionate because in the beginning of my career, you slept in your own bed, you worked at the studio. Now you’re off to Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey. Hollywood’s gone. It’s slowly being enveloped by commercial excess. It’s just not a happy place. The people there are very passionate about their work, but they like to keep it here and it’s just too expensive. So unless the government were to give tons of subsidies to the upcoming filmmakers, but that would also rankle the ire of other unions. It’s a real catch 22 and I don’t know if there’s any suitable relief to that. It’s a tough one.
Tulsa King streams new episodes Sundays on Paramount+. This interview has been edited and condensed.