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

Tulsa King sees Stallone playing Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a former Mafia boss released from prison after 25 years who sets out to rebuild his empire after being banished to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now in its third season, with a fourth on the way, Stallone has become used to the constant grind that is TV filming. He said:

“TV is much harder, much harder, much faster. It’s unrelenting. And also it just battles your brain all over. It’s like being punched with a jab every 10 seconds because nothing’s ever done in continuity. You’re jumping here, you’re jumping there, and, ‘All right, we’re ready.’ I’m like I just got back, [and they’re like] ‘We’re ready, come on back out.’ So it’s unrelenting. Whereas in a film we used to have 90 day shoots. Here you have to do two hours in 11 days, 12 days. So if you really break it down, one season on Tulsa King, is the equivalent to five Rocky movies in time. Because you have each Rocky movie is a two-hour movie, right? Those two hours are just two episodes. You still have eight more to go to finish the series. So it’s a lot of work.”

‘Tulsa King’ Features Sylvester Stallone…as Sylvester Stallone

While there are some actors who simply bring themselves to their roles, Stallone has always played his characters as just that. Playing Manfredi in Tulsa King has allowed him to do something different and actually just play…himself. He continued:

“Taylor Sheridan rang me up at 10 O’Clock at night. He goes, ‘I got this concept about a gangster, fish out of water being banned to Tulsa, Oklahoma.’ I went, I’m in, because I’ve always wanted to play a gangster but play it a little differently. It had been done so brilliantly before, with Tony Soprano and Casino and all that. When we were all allowed to work others, Terence Winter, myself and Taylor, we kind of came up with this, one thing necessary was heart and some humor, because that hadn’t been done really, not really in a long-running character. So that was the intrigue. Also, I basically wanted to play myself, the concept of waking up one morning and going like you’re not an actor, you’re a gangster, but you have the same personality. So what you see up there is pretty much me.”

While reviews of Tulsa King’s third season have been mixed, there is no stopping a Taylor Sheridan show when it is in full flow. A fourth season has already been approved by Paramount, and will head into production sometime next year. The series itself is expanding with the spinoff show, NOLA King, with Samuel L. Jackson leading the New Orleans-set series after his introduction in Tulsa King Season 3.