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Neal McDonough does not want to revisit his villainous role on Yellowstone anytime soon.
The 60-year-old actor, who played ruthless real estate mogul Malcolm Beck on Taylor Sheridan’s Western series, admitted on the Arroyo Grande podcast recently that he has not watched the show.
“I’ve never seen it,” McDonough said on the podcast episode released Wednesday. “You know, I don’t watch any of my stuff.”
He went on to explain that he refuses to watch back any of his work because of his process “as a method actor.” Method acting is an immersive way of preparing for a role that requires an actor to channel the emotions of their real-life experiences while they are performing.
“If I look at a frame of a show from 20 years ago, I know exactly the thought I was thinking,” McDonough said. “I know the song I was thinking about. I know where I was going. So going back, to me, sometimes can be really kind of traumatic and painful.”
McDonough said that he will even avoid screenings of his work at film and TV premieres.
“I’ll go to premieres of our films, and I’ll do the red carpet,” he continued on the podcast. “[My wife] Ruvé and I will walk in, [then] out the exit, grab a nice dinner someplace, go to the party after. ‘How’d you like the movie?’ ‘It was great. It was awesome. I loved it.’
“I just don’t like to watch myself.”
Despite his resistance to watching his work on screen, McDonough said he feels security in his abilities as an actor.
“I was there on the day. I know I did a great job because God gave me a talent,” McDonough said. “I’m terrible at pounding nails. I’m not very good at telling jokes. But as Ruvé said, ‘Man, you can act.’ And so, I don’t need to look to see if it was good or not.”
He added: “They keep on hiring me, right? If they keep on hiring, I must be doing something right.”
McDonough appeared in six episodes of Yellowstone during season two, which aired in 2019. The show ended after season five in December 2024.
Paramount previously announced that a spin-off about the Four Sixes Ranch was in the works. However, Sheridan revealed earlier this year that the project was shelved.
“I would never fictionalize that ranch,” Sheridan said when asked about 6666. “People thought that that was going to be a thing, but I would never do that.”
