‘Yellowstone’ Star Neal McDonough Was Blackballed From Hollywood for Refusing to Do THIS On Screen
Guess you’ve got to respect a man for standing up for what he believes in. Neal McDonough, who Yellowstone fans probably know better as the character Malcom Beck, had a memorable run on Taylor Sheridan’s flagship show.If you call yourself a fan of the hit series, you’ll remember that Malcom Beck was an antagonist in the second season of Yellowstone.
Beck’s storyline presumably ended when he and John Dutton squared off (Costner’s character ended more than a few character’s storylines), and if you’d like to take a walk down memory lane, you can do so by pressing play on the video below:
It’s important to note that just because McDonough’s character looks to be dead (or dying) there, the actor has brought up the old TV rule of “if you didn’t see them die, there’s a good chance they are alive.” McDonough insists that Malcolm Beck is still living, and that he’d be perfect to pop up in a Yellowstone spinoff that’s already in the works.
Sorry Neal, he’s dead…
At the end of the day, McDonough would just be grateful getting any role that he can… because he shared on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast that he went through a brief period of his career where he was blackballed by Hollywood. Though the actor didn’t clarify when that was, he was very detailed about why the industry stopped casting him in roles:
“I’d always had in my contracts that I wouldn’t kiss another woman on screen. My wife didn’t have any problem with it – it was me, really, who had a problem with it.”
That’s something that’s easy to forget about, right? When you watch a movie or TV show and see two characters share a kiss… they’ve likely got their own families at home. Some actors and actresses just brush that off, but for McDonough, he refused to lock lips with anyone other than his wife.
He says that because he drew the line there, Hollywood turned its back on him:
“When I wouldn’t do it… they couldn’t understand. Hollywood just completely turned on me, and they wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore. For two years, I couldn’t get a job and I lost everything you could possibly imagine.
Not just houses (and) material things, but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity – everything. My identity was an actor, and a really good one. Once you don’t have that identity, you’re kind of lost in a tailspin. And I was in a big, ugly tailspin for a couple of years.”
Fortunately, it seems as though that blackballing period has came and went. McDonough has been very busy ever since he starred in Yellowstone, and just last year, he got added to another Taylor Sheridan hit that’s continued to show off the 59-year-old’s acting chops: Tulsa King.
For those that haven’t had a chance to check it out, Tulsa King is about an ex-New York mafia capo named Dwight Manfredi – played by Sylvester Stallone – setting up shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma after being pushed out of his old role by a changing of the guard in the family. Neal McDonough plays Cal Thresher, a powerful and territorial business man that challenges Manfredi’s operations… and McDonough’s role will expand even more in Season 3, which is set to premiere later this year.
