Yellowstone Creator Taylor Sheridan Had A Role On A Hit Chuck Norris Western Series

Today, Taylor Sheridan oversees a vast and constantly expanding empire of TV shows. Ever since his super-popular neo-Western saga "Yellowstone" took off and became a hit for Paramount, the company has tapped Sheridan to repeat the achievement with multiple other series. Nowadays, Sheridan has so many ongoing TV shows it's truly a mystery how the creator has time to tend to them all.

Though the success of "Yellowstone" is unlikely to be matched, every Sheridan series since then has done well in its own right, from the multiple "Yellowstone" spin-offs to the most recent example, the Billy Bob Thornton starring "Landman." The writer's multiple small screen triumphs also come in the wake of him penning some of the best movies of the 2010s, most notably "Sicario," which remains one of Denis Villeneuve's best directorial efforts to this day.

As such, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Sheridan was just a writer, but that's not at all how he got his introduction to Hollywood. Back in the 1990s, Sheridan dropped out of Texas State University and moved to Austin. There, he met a Hollywood talent scout who tempted the young dropout to travel to Los Angeles with the promise of potential acting work. Once in LA, Sheridan started landing roles in various TV series, ultimately going on to secure recurring roles on shows such as "Veronica Mars" and "Sons of Anarchy." It was only after his role on the latter drama failed to provide him with enough money to support his family that he started writing "Sicario" in 2011.

Between 1995 and 2011, then, Sheridan actually had a relatively prolific acting career, and there are several gems to be unearthed from that period. That includes his first ever TV role, which saw him appear on an episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger."

After Taylor Sheridan left Texas behind in the mid-'90s, he actually managed to secure quite a few TV roles rather quickly. In 1997, for example, Sheridan appeared in "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," a popular Western series that's actually streaming for free today. But his first ever role came courtesy of the legendary Chuck Norris-led action crime series "Walker, Texas Ranger." The CBS series aired from 1993 to 2001 and saw Norris portray Cordell Walker, a member of the Texas Ranger Division — which, in real life, is based in the very town Sheridan had left behind to pursue an acting career: Austin. As such, it seems the young Sheridan had left Texas behind only to immediately return for "Walker, Texas Ranger," which was shot in the Lone Star State.

He appears in the season 3 episode "War Zone," which originally aired in 1995 and centers on a group of bank robbers dressed in clown outfits that manage to kill Walker's ex-partner during one of their robberies. Naturally, the Texas Ranger doesn't take too kindly to this development and, alongside his current partner James "Jimmy" Trivette (Clarence Gilyard), sets out to track down these murderous criminals and bring them to justice. Sheridan has a small role at the very beginning of the episode, playing a young street racer named Vernon who takes Keith Reno (Ian Bohen) on one of his races, only for Walker to chase him down. This results in a car crash that could have been fatal for the two teens (a crash that wouldn't have happened if Walker had just left them alone, but I digress).

Sheridan isn't in the episode for long, but he has several lines, which means he got his SAG card with his first ever on-screen role — something Brad Pitt also tried to achieve with a gutsy move on his first movie, wherein he essentially created his own lines. Sheridan didn't need to pull any such tricks, however, and it marked an auspicious start to the young actor's career.

In an interview with the New York Times, Taylor Sheridan was asked about his experience on "Walker, Texas Ranger," and revealed that Chuck Norris was the first celebrity he'd ever met. "He was such a gracious guy," the "Yellowstone" creator recalled. "But he got into a fight with another actor. Chuck's itty-bitty, and this guy was huge. You know all the Chuck Norris jokes? He actually does just beat people up with his fists." Not only did Sheridan land a speaking part in a big series for his first role, then, but he also got to see Chuck Norris beat up a guy in real life, which must have seemed like a positive omen for the young Sheridan just embarking on his acting career.

Of course, Sheridan wouldn't stick to performing, choosing instead to venture into writing some 15 years after he first moved to Los Angeles. But his early roles in "Walker, Texas Ranger" and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" spoke to his sensibilities and were, in and of themselves, omens in the sense they hinted at Sheridan's Western revivalism, which has come to take over TV in a post-"Yellowstone" world.

Meanwhile, Norris just returned to acting after an extended break with the 2024 direct-to-VOD action movie "Agent Recon." Perhaps Sheridan could bring him into his TV empire and bring his own career full circle...