As Yellowstone prepares to ride into the sunset in its final season, keeping key details under wraps is more important than ever.
With such a popular series, priority one was preventing a torrent of spoilers from hitting the internet. Now that the end is nigh, Executive Producer Christina Voras has gone into new details as to the lengths Taylor Sheridan and crew had to go to.
Recently, we explored the secret code that was used to hide key character deaths in the Season 5 scripts, while back in November, we explained the careful script redactions and use of closed sets to cordon off prying eyes from a shoot. It’s an almost absurd level of subterfuge, but in a series as big as Yellowstone, it makes sense why it was needed. In a new interview to commemorate the series’ conclusion, Voras gave new details on what those techniques looked like, as well as a surprising new level of information control.
Not only controlling what background actors saw, but what they heard
In a December 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Voras explained that the biggest challenge was “to be able to tell these stories […] in a way where no one is going home at night and accidentally let it slip about something they saw on set?” The answer had to do with “strategy in how it was shot.”
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The team, she explained, was “very smart about what absolutely had to be done in front of hundreds of extras and what could be shot in such a way where, when it’s cut together, it would feel like all of those people were there.” The most surprising element isn’t just their control over what background actors saw while on set, but also on what they heard.
There was clear focus at times on controlling the sound on set, specifically “not allowing the extras to hear everything that was being said.” In addition to controlling what background actors were able to hear, she remembered that “there was also an alternate script that was used in some of the wider shots that was absent of information […] Then in the closer coverage, they recorded the real track.”
Extreme though it made be, fans welcomed (and occasionally mourned) the season’s surprises. Here’s how to watch the rest of the season.
