How ‘Marshals’ Director Greg Yaitanes Returned to His Procedural Roots for the ‘Yellowstone’ Spinoff

In the early 2000s, director Greg Yaitanes cut his teeth directing TV procedurals like “Cold Case” and “CSI: Miami,” but for the last dozen years, he’s worked exclusively in the world of prestige streaming and premium cable series like “House of the Dragon” and “Presumed Innocent.” When he first received the pilot script for “Yellowstone” spinoff “Marshals,” he assumed that it would be a streaming series for Paramount+.

“When I read the script, I didn’t know it was going to be a broadcast pilot,” Yaitanes said. “That’s how elevated I thought it was.” Yaitanes’ observation gets at what makes “Marshals” such a terrific show: It delivers the traditional satisfactions of a CBS procedural but injects longing, melancholy, and regret into the formula without sacrificing the expected humor or visceral chase sequences. The action gives the relationship higher stakes, and the emotional resonance of the characterizations ratchets up the intensity once the action kicks in.

That intersection between “Yellowstone“-style melodrama and a procedural’s rituals and conventions was a big part of the appeal for Yaitanes. “I can’t direct anything if I don’t find an emotional hook that pulls me in,” Yaitanes said. On “Marshals,” that emotional hook was the relationship between widower Kayce (Luke Grimes) and his son Tate (Brecken Merrill). “Having been a single dad to two sons, it was a story I could relate to and connect to, with that feeling that you’re in a time in your life where you’re trying to make peace, but things keep confronting you.”

Once Yaitanes found the personal connection, he had to figure out the visual language for the show and, as the director of its first two episodes, make that language replicable by all the filmmakers who would follow him. “I needed to protect that earlier me who came up and cut his teeth on a lot of broadcast procedurals,” Yaitanes said. “I knew I had to leave behind a workflow that was accomplishable, structured so that things could be continually accomplished week in and week out.”

The degree of difficulty was increased by the fact that Yaitanes had to make “Marshals” feel of a piece with its predecessor, “Yellowstone,” on a fraction of the budget. “The legacy series had significantly more time and resources than we did, just by the nature of ‘Marshals’ being on broadcast,” Yaitanes said. One way Yaitanes maximized his resources was by being careful about where to take his time and where to put his years of experience to use, shooting as much as possible as fast as possible.

“I’ve done so many procedurals, so I’m familiar with what you need to make those scenes work,” Yaitanes said of the scenes involving the principal characters planning at their headquarters, or hanging out together in their off hours. “I really loaded those days, so that we could put all our time into the ‘Yellowstone’ scenes, which would be anything on the ranch with Kayce. You have animals in those, and you’re deep into an area where nothing happens quickly. It takes five minutes just to walk to the camera because everything is so far away.”

‘Marshals’Sonja Flemming/CBS

Yaitanes says that while a show like “House of the Dragon” requires in-depth pre-viz, and “Marshals” called for detailed storyboards for a few of its complex set pieces, in general, he prefers to let the actors guide the camera — another reason “Marshals” cuts as deep and feels as soulful as it does. “I learned from working with Kathryn Morris on ‘Cold Case’ to trust myself visually,” Yaitanes said. “I basically feel like I can make cool shots wherever the actors want to go, so I want them to do what feels honest for them.”

Grounding the action in honest behavior gave Yaitanes the freedom to get a little heightened when he wanted to, as in a rousing chase sequence in the second episode, involving a horse and an SUV. “I was pulling from ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’ showing that to people and explaining that we needed that kind of poppy fun,” Yaitanes said. For Yaitanes, a devoted cinephile whose references range from Orson Welles and David Lean to Richard Donner, being able to draw from film history is another benefit to directing a show like “Marshals.”

“I love being able to pull from vast years of film history and my mental encyclopedia to pay homage and take these sequences for a ride,” Yaitanes said. That said, he also didn’t hesitate to give some of the fun moments to his second unit director, Michael Friedman, with whom he collaborated closely on all the set pieces to deliver big-screen impact on a small-screen budget. “As much as I love [shooting action], I also love handing it off if it means I’ll achieve more on screen. Michael and I kept swapping, and it was a really good time. Really fun and crazy shooting days.”

In spite of the intense schedule — or maybe because of it — Yaitanes enjoyed returning to the world of network television and its fast pace. “I love the puzzle aspect of it,” he said. “I’m an efficiency nut. The tighter the box, the more my brain goes on fire, and I get to really figure out how we’re going to land the plane with the time and money we have. There’s a real urgency in broadcast that I missed. We felt scrappy and nimble, and that was really fun.”

‘Marshals’ airs Sunday nights on CBS and is currently streaming on Paramount+.