'Yellowstone' Star Luke Grimes Finds It Hard to Shake His Character When He's Not Filming

Yellowstone is one of the most intense television shows currently airing on the small screen — if not ever — and in a new interview, actor Luke Grimes, who portrays Kayce Dutton on the show, admits that he finds it difficult to shake his character and some of his darker plotlines when it's time to turn the cameras off and go home.

The Season 3 cliffhanger left Kayce in limbo as gunmen burst into his office and opened fire. John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) also came under attack in the final moments of Season 3, and Season 4 commenced with a great deal of action and violence as the Dutton family responded to those attacks. Grimes' character of Kayce was at the center of that violence, as well as the reprisals that followed, and he tells Taste of Country that it can be difficult to shake the character when he's not working.

"Yeah, and not on purpose," Grimes acknowledges in an interview to promote the new season. "I wish that I could just have the concentration that I felt like I needed to do justice to this part and then be able to flip a switch and go home and just go straight into my regular life. But it's a hard transition," he admits.

"I get better at it as I get older," Grimes says. "I used to be really terrible at it, and tried a bunch of things that didn't work," he adds ruefully.

"And now it's just more about kinda ... I just know when we're shooting that that's going to be in the back of my mind at all times, if it's not in the front of my mind. It's there. You know, he's kind of at an arm's reach at any moment in the months when we're shooting, and even when we're on hiatus ...  it's hard not to get obsessed with this story to begin with, and especially when you're having to play a Dutton."

The storyline involving Kayce, his wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and their son Tate (Brecken Merrill) is likely to claim a significant portion of Season 4 of Yellowstone. Tune in to Yellowstone every Sunday night at 8PM ET on the Paramount Network to keep track of the latest, and stay tuned to Taste of Country as we provide week-to-week coverage of Yellowstone and the first season of the upcoming prequel 1883, including episode analysis, news on the shows, cast interviews and more.

As part of our comprehensive coverage, check out the new Dutton Rules podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

1883 is set to premiere on Dec. 19 and will air exclusively on Paramount+. Subscribe to the streaming service to make sure you don't miss out.