Yellowstone actor Neal McDonough has explained why he refuses to watch any of his projects, including the hit Taylor Sheridan series.
Neal McDonough has revealed watching himself on screen is too “traumatic and painful”.
The 60-year-old actor, who played the ruthless Malcolm Beck in season two of Yellowstone, has insisted he’s never watched the hit Taylor Sheridan show, nor any of his other projects over the years.
He told the Arroyo Grande podcast: “I’ve never seen it. You know, I don’t watch any of my stuff.
“As a method actor, I can tell you if I look at a frame – that’s why I don’t watch any of my stuff.
“If I look at a frame of a show from 20 years ago, I know exactly the thought I was thinking. I know the song I was thinking about. I know where I was going.
“So going back to me sometimes can be really kind of traumatic and painful.”
Even when Neal turns up to film premieres, he still avoids actually watching the movie.
He added: “I’ll go to premieres of our films, and I’ll do the red carpet.
“[My wife] Ruvé and I will walk in, out the exit, grab a nice dinner someplace, go to the party after.
“‘How’d you like the movie?’ ‘It was great. It was awesome. I loved it.’ I just don’t like to watch myself.”
While some actors might decide to watch their films or shows back to check in on their own performances, Neal isn’t interested in that because he was “there on the day”.
He explained: “I know I did a great job because God gave me a talent. I’m terrible at pounding nails. I’m not very good at telling jokes.
“But as Ruvé said, ‘Man, you can act.’ And so I don’t need to look to see if it was good or not. They keep on hiring me, right?”
Neal has recently appeared in the likes of The Last Rodeo, Guns and Moses and Tulsa King.
He previously said that for a long time, Hollywood “completely turned” on him and he was unable to land any acting gigs due to a no kissing rule.
Appearing on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast, he said: “I’d always had in my contracts that I wouldn’t kiss another woman onscreen. My wife didn’t have a problem with it, it was me really who had a problem with it. They couldn’t understand it, Hollywood just completely turned on me and they wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore. And for two years I couldn’t get a job and I lost everything you could possibly imagine.
“Not just houses and material things but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity, everything. My identity was an actor and a really good one. And once you don’t have that identity, you’re kind of lost in a tailspin and I was lost in a big ugly tailspin for a couple of years.”
However, weeks later he and Ruvé – who he has been married to since 2003 – backtracked on his comments.
She told TMZ: “We want to say thank you, Hollywood. I don’t like how people are saying that Hollywood turned its back on Neal. No, it didn’t. The right people found Neal and put him in the right place. We want to say thank you, Hollywood. We want to continue doing incredible films with Neal, giving the right messages. We don’t want to say Hollywood turned. Guided us to where we are is what Hollywood did, and we want to say, Thank you, Hollywood.”
Neal added: “Everyone talks about that stuff that happened all those years ago. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t be here. Those were stepping stones, and it made our relationship closer.”
Neal McDonough: Watching Yellowstone would be too ‘traumatic and painful’
