Despite any and all differences from its flagship Yellowstone, Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch has proven itself to be a hit with audiences, and ranked high up on the most-watched shows of the 2025-2026 TV season. Such spoils did not come without an equal amount of toils for the cast and crew during the nine-episode season’s production, and Cole Hauser spoke up about why it wasn’t necessarily the ranching or any of the cowboy work that made filming difficult.
While promoting his brand Free Rein’s American Dirt Protein Coffee, which probably tastes pretty danged good on the front porch of any Dutton family member’s home, Cole Hauser told People that filming for three-quarters of the year in Texas put everyone up close and personal with a full gamut of weather conditions to suffer through. In his words:
I think it was the end of the nine months of work, so I think I was a bit wiped out. The cast and crew were wiped out. We went through a lot of weather issues with the heat, then the freezing cold, and there were ice storms. It was just nuts.
As someone who's lived in Texas for the past 6-7 years, I can speak to the idea that there are entire months where one can experience all four seasons within any given week. Not so much the case during July and August, when it's just a dry-heat nightmare, but that's obviously its own debilitating setback. (Hauser previously spoke about the challenge of keeping Rip's extra pouds on due to excess sweating.) On the flip side, we went through a winter storm so hectic that 9-1-1: Lone Star made it an episode.
I do wonder if the flip-flopping weather caused temporary delays in production along the way, since it's kinda wild that Dutton Ranch spent nine months filming in Texas for a nine-episode season. Taylor Sheridan productions do tend to feel more like movies than standard TV fare, so maybe that was also part of it.
Whatever the reason for the extended production, Cole Hauser confirmed that everyone was ready to hang their metaphorical hats up when everything wrapped. He continued:
I think everybody at the very end of Episode 9 was ready to take a breather, go home, rest up and get ready for this next year.
One Dutton Ranch co-star who was probably ready to hit the road long before that point was Ed Harris, who publicly went off on the creative team for not utilizing him the way he felt he should have been used. It was reported that his behind-the-scenes issues directly led to Chad Feehan stepping down as Season 1 showrunner, and he was later replaced with SEAL Team creator Benjamin Cavell. If Harris was already testy in general, I cannot imagine the draining heat and/or pummeling cold helped his mood at all.
For Kelly Reilly, the stress over Dutton Ranch’s first season was more about heading up a new TV show without everyone else that made the Yellowstone ensemble so strong. But now that she’s got that under her belt, the wait for Season 2 is on, and fans can stream the entirety of Dutton Ranch’s first season via Paramount+ subscription in the meantime.
