“We were all on the same creative track” – DNyuz

In February 2023, Deadline broke the news that Terence Winter would be stepping down as showrunner of Tulsa KingTaylor Sheridan’s latest film for Paramount+ stars Sylvester Stallone as a recently released from prison mob boss named Dwight “The General” Manfredi who builds a new criminal empire in Oklahoma.

It was more than a surprise, then, to learn that Winter would return to the show exactly one year later to serve as a writer/executive producer. (Like Sheridan’s other series produced by 101 Studios, Tulsa King production on Season 2 began without a traditional showrunner, with director/EP Craig Zisk taking on the leadership role).

Ahead of the September 15 Season 2 premiere, Winter explains what to expect in the upcoming episodes and why he decided to return to the Tulsa crime world he helped build with Sheridan and Stallone.

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DEADLINE Why did you return to the show?

TERENCE WINTER Because I love it. I love working with Sly. I love the cast and the crew and we got to the point where we had worked through all the creative issues… we were all on the same creative page, I think. And the fact that I had the opportunity to continue, I just couldn’t pass that up. It’s so much fun to do. And yeah, working with Sly and this group of actors was one of the highlights, so I was so happy that we were able to pull that off.

DEADLINE These kinds of things don’t happen very often.

WINTER No one was happier than me, believe me.

DEADLINE How has your role in the series really changed?

WINTER It’s changed in the sense that I’m much more focused on the writing than I am on set and producing. We brought on a great production director this year, Craig Zisk. That took a lot of those duties off of me and it’s been more about working directly with Sly and the writers. So in that sense it’s changed. I went to Atlanta a couple of times where we were filming this year and was involved in casting and things like that, but for the most part I just sat there and focused on writing, which is what I really want to do.

TERM Speaking of Atlanta, why did production move from Oklahoma to Atlanta?

WINTER That was a production consideration, which I took myself out of. I suppose it was because of the better, easier infrastructure. Oklahoma was great, but I think there’s just a lot more production in Atlanta, and it’s easier to get crews. I suppose it just made more sense from a business perspective. We’re still going to Oklahoma for exteriors. People aren’t going to see a significant difference between season one and season two.

DEADLINE We ​​wrote about how Stallone was accused of belittling extras on set, which led to an Atlanta casting agent dropping the show. Can you explain what happened? Were you there?

WINTER No, I was in LA reading about it like everyone else. I wasn’t on set at all. Again, I just want to focus on writing and I’m lucky enough to be able to do that from home.

TERM In the Season 2 premiere, will you go back to the moments after Dwight was arrested?

WINTER Yeah. We start right away, literally moments later when he’s being processed and put in a cell. That’s what made the writing so fun. The table was already set in an interesting way. This guy just got arrested. What do they do with him? Well, they take all the stuff out of his pockets and put him in a jail cell. Who does he need in there? What happens then? You just take it from there.

DEADLINE It looks like he’ll be in trouble for a while.

WINTER That could be.

DEADLINE Why did Stacy, played by Andrea Savage, do that to him and get him arrested in the finale?

WINTER I think she felt like she was being pressured by her bosses to maybe get arrested and lose her job or play along, and they clearly wanted to lock this guy up. She was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. So she did what she felt she had to do. She’s a very complicated woman.

DEADLINE Is Dwight’s daughter Tina (Tatiana Zappardino) in danger this season?

WINTER I think being the daughter of a mob boss is always a little bit dangerous — especially being the daughter of a mob boss who’s at odds with another psychotic mob boss. I would say you’re always a little bit at risk, definitely.

DEADLINE Viewers expected you to keep the evil Caolan Waltrip around for a while. Did you enjoy defying expectations?

WINTER Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you can take on a guy like Dwight and expect a happy ending when you’re clashing like that. That was the logical conclusion to that storyline. I think anything short of him ending up on the wall somewhere without his brains would have been a false note. It kind of felt like that was where it was supposed to go, and I think as an audience I probably would want it to go.

DEADLINE Can you tell us something about the new antagonist?S?

WINTER One is played by Frank Grillo, a rival mob boss from Kansas City. He gets wind of an intruder in Tulsa who he considers a. He’s not happy about it, of course. He feels he owes something. The other is played by Neil McDonough, a rival in the medical marijuana business and perhaps a romantic rival to Margaret, the character played by Dana Delany.

DEADLINE Who had the idea to hire Frank Grillo?

WINTER I think Sly, actually. When we first started talking about that character, Frank was probably one of the first people he mentioned, and pretty much everyone was excited. He came in and he was a perfect fit. As I said before, when you cast someone to go up against Stallone as the antagonist, you need someone with gravitas who’s not going to cower. Sly is very intimidating, and you need someone who can look him in the eye and feel like they can pull it off, whether they can or not. These villains are real threats. Both Neil and Frank bring that heft and gravitas that you need to make it feel scary and real.

DEADLINE What do you think about affairs of the heart when it comes to Dwight? Can you talk about that?

WINTER We definitely get a lot more insight into his relationship with Margaret, and what he wants emotionally in his relationship with his daughter. This is a man who got out of prison after 25 years and now has maybe 15 good years left to make something of his life and repair the damage of the past. So the emotional components of his life are just as important to him as the business side. And of course he wants the respect that he feels he deserves as a mob boss, but it’s also more about repairing that broken family and finding peace and comfort and love, which even a mob boss needs and wants. When you’re a man of a certain age and you feel like you’ve screwed up your whole life and you only have a limited amount of time and resources to fix it, what do you do? The clock is ticking and you’ve screwed up and you’re desperately trying to build something in a place that you’ve never been before. You’re a total fish out of water and your skills are very limited. Your conflict resolution skills are even more limited than that. So it’s a fun challenge to figure out how this guy gets through the day.

DEADLINE The last time we spoke, you mentioned how much fun it was to be on set with Stallone and talk about his life’s work, especially his Rocky days. Do you miss that?

WINTER We still Zoom all the time. He doesn’t have a conversation that’s not on Zoom or FaceTime. I don’t know what he has against real traditional phone conversations, but you literally see FaceTime and it’s him, because he’s the only one doing it. It’s hard. I’m driving and I look at the phone and it’s him. He just likes to look you in the eye when he’s talking to you, which is great. But it’s funny. Most people just talk on the phone. And it’s happened to me in public. To me, it’s just Sly. But other people are like, ‘oh, that’s Rocky in the drugstore next to me.’ But again, this is LA, where you would expect that conversation to happen.

The post ‘Tulsa King’s former showrunner Terence Winter on why he returned to the Paramount+ drama: ‘We were all on the same page creatively’ appeared first on Deadline.