Taylor Sheridan Always Insisted On Making This Yellowstone Actor's Character Swear

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"Yellowstone" wrapped up with a controversial final season that saw Kevin Costner's John Dutton killed off. But the show's legacy lives on with multiple spin-offs planned. While details about those continuation shows remain sparse, you can bet that at least one of them will be catered by the "Yellowstone" actor who was also in charge of catering for the popular series. Chef Gator, the official chef of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, was actually real-life chef and "Yellowstone" caterer Gabriel Guilbeau. Aside from being impressed enough with the man's cooking to cast him on the show, it seems series creator Taylor Sheridan took great pleasure in forcing him to curse on-camera.

Guilbeau's real-life nickname is "Gator Gabe," which he earned in high school due to his favorite extracurricular activities of fishing, hunting, and swimming in swamps. He even caught some actual alligators in his time. During his youth, he would follow his dad, David "Cajun" Guilbeau, to catering jobs on Hollywood productions before eventually becoming a chef for all manner of film and TV projects himself. In 2018, he got the call to cater "Yellowstone" during its first season, and as he told Delish, he met Sheridan on his very first day. According to Gator, Sheridan pointed to the BBQ pit and asked when he was going to get it going, to which the chef responded, "I was thinking about lighting it right now." In that moment, he immediately ingratiated himself with the show creator, who replied, "That's the right answer. You'll do just fine here."

After this, Sheridan actually cast Guilbeau on the show itself, initially with a non-speaking appearance in the background of a scene before giving the chef actual lines — several of which weren't exactly family-friendly.

Yellowstone isn't exactly the most accurate show, but its chef was about as genuine as it gets. According to Gabriel Guilbeau, his debut appearance as an actor on "Yellowstone" "wasn't optional." The chef told Us Weekly that his casting happened when Taylor Sheridan told the production crew to build an outdoor stove for him during filming of season 1 episode "The Long Black Train." As Guilbeau remembered it, "Taylor threw me in front of the camera and he said, 'OK, go.' And I said, 'OK, go?!' He goes, 'Yeah, just, you know, do Gator stuff.' I was like, 'Well, I guess I'll just start making dinner and they can just film that.'"

The brief scene didn't require any lines from Chef Gator, but in season 2, Sheridan gave him a bigger role as the official chef for the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. Beginning with season 2 episode 3, "The Reek of Desperation," Gator appeared in a total of 18 episodes across the show's five-season run.

Guilbeau spoke to Delish about his time on the show and recalled a story from the set whereby he and several other cast and crew drank "a whole fridge full of beers in Rip [Wheeler's] cabin" the night before he was due to shoot a scene which required him to make biscuits. The scene in question sees Gator (presumably hungover) making a tray of biscuits and sampling his work, remarking, "That's how you make a f*****g biscuit." As Guilbeau said, "I did my big biscuit scene and swore in front of my whole family and the entire nation on TV," though it seems he tried hard to clean up the lines.

In his Delish interview, Gabriel Guilbeau went on to explain that Sheridan was determined to make his character curse on "Yellowstone" regardless of whether he liked it or not. "It's great because Taylor Sheridan always really likes me to swear on TV, apparently," he said, continuing:

"I'll always go and do these scenes and I'll go and I'll say 'damn' instead of whatever. And [Sheridan will] say, 'Hey, Gator, what does the script say?' 'Well, it says the F word.' And he goes, 'Read the script, Gator.' I said, 'My grandparents watch this show. How could I? You're gonna make me swear?'"

Guilbeau, who has also written a recipe book, "Yellowstone: The Official Dutton Ranch Family Cookbook," clearly didn't upset Sheridan too much by trying to keep his scenes family-friendly as he remained with "Yellowstone" throughout its run and also catered the spin-off "1883." What's more, the chef surely had some pent-up frustration of his own. As he told Delish, "Yellowstone" involved shooting in multiple remote locations with less than ideal conditions. "I've had to cook on the side of a mountain, and bring food even higher up," he said, though he did add, "I wouldn't have it any other way." With that in mind, letting a curse word fly here or there was surely therapeutic, and considering Chef Gator was constantly met with John Dutton's disapproval, it also made sense for the character. Guilbeau even managed to elicit a real curse word from Dutton himself when Kevin Costner became grossed out during a "Yellowstone" season 2 scene that involved a plate of grilled octopus. Let's hope Gator manages to run his mouth, or indeed gross out the cast, on one of the upcoming "Yellowstone" spin-offs.