Clint Eastwood Gave Luke Grimes His Big Break — with ‘Marshals,’ the Actor Pays Tribute to Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’

When CBS initially began promoting “Marshals,” its “Yellowstone” spinoff featuring Luke Grimes reprising his role as rancher Kayce Dutton, the marketing leaned into an image of Grimes with his back to the camera in a pose that was instantly recognizable to Clint Eastwood enthusiasts. “Unforgiven” may be over 30 years old, but its iconic poster image of Eastwood as haunted killer William Munny remains iconic for the film’s fans — one of whom is Grimes himself.

“I think ‘Unforgiven’ is the best Western ever made,” Grimes told IndieWire, “and I’ve always loved that poster.” It was Grimes’ idea to pay tribute to Eastwood’s classic with the “Marshals” key art, a pitch that met with instant approval from series creator and fellow “Unforgiven” disciple Spencer Hudnut. Hudnut and Grimes both felt it was appropriate to tip their hats to the earlier film given the parallels with Kayce Dutton’s story as an ex-Navy SEAL struggling to make peace with his violent past.

“There are a lot of similarities,” Grimes said. “When we first meet Kayce, his wife is gone and he’s lost his power because he’s lost the love of his life and he’s failing at keeping his ranch and being a father without her — just like in ‘Unforgiven.'”

There was also another, more personal connection to “Unforgiven” and Clint Eastwood’s career as a whole: according to Grimes, if it weren’t for Clint Eastwood he might never have been cast on “Yellowstone” in the first place.

“Clint Eastwood cast me in ‘American Sniper,’ in a role that was way too big for where I was in my career at the time,” Grimes said. “That part should have gone to a movie star, but Clint doesn’t really care about the rules.” Luckily for Grimes, “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan saw “American Sniper” in the theater while he was writing his new series, and Grimes caught his eye. “I think that played a big part in me getting ‘Yellowstone.'”

‘Marshals’Fred Hayes/CBS

Unlike the prestige cable series that spawned it, “Marshals” is a broadcast procedural that places Kayce Dutton in an entirely new context — something that made Grimes initially wary about signing on for the new show. “I didn’t know much about procedurals, and I thought it might be bizarre to take my character from a show that was very much not a procedural and put him in that world,” Grimes said. There was also the matter of how Kayce ended “Yellowstone” — finding happiness and peace with his wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and son Tate (Breckin Merrill).

“Finally, this guy who was between a rock and a hard place for six years was able to literally ride off into the sunset,” Grimes said. “I was like, ‘Maybe we should just leave him alone and let him have it.'” Yet once “Yellowstone” wrapped, Grimes found that he missed playing Kayce, and he also started to think that it was foolish to turn down steady work when he became a father for the first time. “It’s weird to turn down a job when you have a kid.”

Becoming a father made the show appealing for creative reasons too, when Grimes met with Hudnut and learned that the relationship between Kayce and Tate would be a cornerstone of the series. “It was like art imitating life,” Grimes said, adding that the opportunity to dive deeply into Kayce’s traumatic past was also too good to pass up. When Kelsey Asbille was unavailable to return as Kayce’s wife Monica, Hudnut was able to add further emotional resonance to the father-son tale by killing off the character, a decision that met with some controversy from fans but that gave “Marshals” a tragic power that deepened and spread throughout the season.

The parallel stories of Kayce’s attempt to redeem his violent past and his struggle to raise his son without Monica intersect on the season finale, in which circumstances require Tate to commit his own act of violence to defend himself and his father. Grimes’ reaction to the moment, from which he knows his son can never come back, yields one of the most quietly devastating moments on network TV this year, and Grimes acknowledges that becoming a father himself may have added some emotional texture to his performance.

“The whole run of ‘Yellowstone,’ I was just guessing,” Grimes said of his scenes with Breckin Merrill. “I didn’t know what being a father was like. But I think being a father changes the way I not only treat my pretend son, but the way I treat everyone. Now I see everyone as a baby that just got big — I give people a lot more grace and forgiveness knowing they started as someone’s child. That was a whole new perspective I didn’t see coming.”

‘Marshals’Sonja Flemming/CBS

That perspective, combined with the ability to take Kayce in new directions on a series with more episodes per season than “Yellowstone” (and where Grimes is number one on the call sheet), has made “Marshals” a pleasurable experience for the actor, who notes that he’s found an autonomy in series television that isn’t always available in films. “On film, the director is the ringleader,” Grimes said. “He’s the top of the food chain. On TV, you might have a director come in and it’s their first time on the show, but as an actor you’re on the fortieth episode. It gives you more power.”

Grimes says that it’s part of his job to be as collaborative as possible — “The goal is to be open, because sometimes the director will have a note that is right, and I have to be open to the possibility that they’re seeing something that I’m not” — but that when push comes to shove, he understands Kayce in a way that gives him ownership of the character. “There are times when you’ve got to put your foot down and say, ‘I don’t think he would do this,'” he said. “If it’s not something they need for the story or tone for the scene to work, if it’s just a character thing, I think I do know best at the end of the day.”

“Marshals” is currently streaming on Paramount+.