Hollywood Reporter inside dirt on Kevin Costner and the death of Yellowstone

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It began, as so many arguments do, at a kitchen table. They were filming on a soundstage in Utah — Kevin Costner, Wes Bentley and Kelly Reilly — playing out another tense exchange in the Dutton family drama Yellowstone. But between takes, tensions boiled over. Costner, both star and executive producer, was pushing Bentley to ditch Taylor Sheridan’s script and play the moment his way. Bentley refused. He told Costner that he had signed up for a Taylor Sheridan show, not a Kevin Costner production.

Kevin didn’t like that, and he lunged at him,” says a source who was present. “No fists were thrown, but they were in each other’s faces, pushing and shoving and just getting hot until they had to be separated.” Reilly, according to one witness, was in tears. Production briefly shut down.

The dust-up — previously unreported — was a tipping point on a set already cracking from creative power struggles and bruised egos. But for Costner, it was merely the latest unfortunate incident in a long series of unfortunate incidents, a career marked by feuds, walkouts, lawsuits, financing fiascos and a growing reputation for being, as one former colleague put it, “impossible.”

There’s a long list of people in Hollywood who swear they’ll never work with Costner again. And they all have their reasons. He doesn’t always pay his bills on time — one since-settled lawsuit alleged hundreds of thousands in unpaid costume fees. He burns through relationships — like his longtime producing partner, whom he sued for $15 million. He ignores advice, even from folks like Steven Spielberg. He rewrites scripts without warning, overrules directors and on more than one occasion has clashed with his co-stars — including Clint Eastwood, Kurt Russell … and Wes Bentley.

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