Sylvester Stallone Breaks Down Why Working on Taylor Sheridan’s Crime Drama is “Unrelenting”

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Sylvester Stallone has joined the universe created by Taylor Sheridan, taking the lead role in the hit crime drama Tulsa King. This marks Stallone’s first significant television role, and he’s discovered a big difference between filming a TV show and a movie. In a recent interview with GQ, he described the schedule for a season of Tulsa King as incredibly demanding and fast-paced.

As a lifelong movie fan, I’ve always loved Sylvester Stallone, so I was excited to hear about Tulsa King. The show stars him as Dwight Manfredi, nicknamed ‘The General,’ a former mob boss who gets out of prison after 25 years and tries to start over in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s really interesting to see him embrace TV work – we’re now in season three, with a fourth already planned, and he’s mentioned getting used to the demanding schedule that comes with filming for television. He’s really settled into the long haul of TV production, it seems.

Working on television is significantly more demanding than film. It’s incredibly fast-paced and doesn’t give you a break. It feels like a constant stream of quick challenges, because scenes aren’t filmed in order. You’re constantly switching between locations and setups with very little downtime. A film shoot might take around 90 days, but we’re expected to complete two hours of footage in just 11 or 12 days. To put it in perspective, filming one season of Tulsa King requires the same amount of work as making five Rocky movies. Each Rocky film is about two hours long, which translates to two episodes of our show, but we still have eight more episodes to film to finish the season. It’s a huge workload.

‘Tulsa King’ Features Sylvester Stallone…as Sylvester Stallone

Most actors portray characters as someone other than themselves, but Stallone has always been known for playing characters as himself. With his role as Manfredi in Tulsa King, he’s finally had the chance to simply be…himself. He explained:

Taylor Sheridan called me late one night with an idea for a show about a gangster who’s forced to relocate to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I immediately signed on. I’d always wanted to play a gangster, but with a fresh take. There have been amazing gangster characters before, like Tony Soprano and the ones in Casino, so we wanted to do something different. When Taylor, Terence Winter, and I started developing the show, we agreed it needed to have heart and humor, because those elements hadn’t really been explored in a long-running character before. That’s what really grabbed me. Plus, I wanted to play a character who was essentially still me – someone who wakes up one day and finds themselves living as a gangster, but with the same personality. What you see on screen is pretty much me being myself in that situation.

Despite receiving mixed reviews, Tulsa King is continuing strong. Paramount has already greenlit a fourth season, scheduled to begin production next year. The universe is also expanding with a spinoff series, NOLA King, starring Samuel L. Jackson, who was first introduced in Season 3 of Tulsa King.

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2025-10-25 20:09