Neal McDonough may be known as one of the most ruthless villains in the “Yellowstone” universe, but there’s one thing the actor has never done: watch the show.
McDonough, 60, played ruthless businessman Malcolm Beck on the popular Taylor Sheridan series and appeared in six episodes in Season 2.
But reliving the performance is something McDonough admits he avoids.
“I’ve never seen that. You know, I don’t watch any of my stuff,” McDonough said on the “Arroyo Grande” podcast.
He went on to explain why he refused to watch himself on screen.
“As a method actor, I can tell you if I look at a shot, so I’m not watching anything. If I look at a shot of a show from 20 years ago, I know exactly what I’m thinking about. I know the song I’m thinking of. I know where I’m going. So coming back to me can be really traumatic and painful sometimes,” he shared.
Even though he attended the premieres of his own movie, that doesn’t mean he’ll watch the finished product.
“I will go to the premieres of our movies and be on the red carpet. [His wife] Ruvé and I will go in, go out, have a nice dinner somewhere, and then go to the party. ‘How did you like the movie?’ ‘It was great. It was great. ‘I loved it.’ “I don’t like watching myself,” he said.
And McDonough doesn’t lose sleep over whether he succeeds in a particular scene.
“I was there that day,” he said. “I know I’m doing a great job because God gave me a gift. I’m terrible at nails. I’m not very good at making jokes. But as Ruvé says, ‘Dude, you can act.’ So I don’t need to check if it’s okay or not. They keep hiring me, right? If they keep hiring, I must be doing something right.”
The decision to avoid watching “Yellowstone” came years after a painful chapter in McDonough’s life that left him questioning whether his Hollywood career was over.
McDonough claimed he was fired from ABC’s “Scoundrels” in 2010 after refusing to do intimate scenes with a female co-star, a decision he said effectively derailed his career and left him in a difficult financial and personal situation.
“What time does the bar open? That was generally my thought process at the time,” he told Fox News Digital in May. “You know, I got fired from a show because I didn’t kiss a woman. Nobody hired me because they thought I was a religious nut, so I loved my wife too much. And nobody can understand that, nobody can understand that.”
McDonough also spoke openly about his struggle with alcohol at the time.
He said he had “always been a drinker” but that “it became a bad problem” after Hollywood blacklisted him.
“I lost my house, I lost my cars, I lost everything,” he said.
Then his wife Ruvé stepped in.
“He grabbed me and said, ‘Us or the bottle, you choose,'” McDonough recalled. “And I never looked back.”
This ultimatum changed everything for the long-time actor.
McDonough and Ruvé have been married for nearly 23 years. They share five children and have also formed a professional partnership, producing projects together such as “Boon,” “The Warrant: Breaker’s Law,” “Homestead” and “The Last Rodeo.”
The couple met in 2000 while McDonough was filming “Band of Brothers” and married on December 1, 2003.