Taylor Sheridan Calls ‘Tulsa King’ an ‘Absurd Comedy of Errors’
Taylor Sheridan continues to dominate the television world with the release of his new series Tulsa King. The show stars Sylvestor Stallone as Dwight Manfredi, a New York mafia capo who sets up shop in Tulsa, OK, after serving a 25-year prison sentence. The premise might not seem like it would leave much room for comedy, but Sheridan has added a mix of humor to the series.
What is ‘Tulsa King’ about?
Tulsa King premieres on Paramount+ on Nov. 13, 2022. The new series follows Dwight “The General” Manfredi — a New York gangster who is released from prison after serving a 25-year sentence. “Coming out, he expects to be rewarded,” Stallone, who stars as Dwight, said in a featurette. “But now he’s sent to Tulsa.”
“The guy has to start a new life when most people think life is over,” the actor continued. “He goes out west, and now he’s building a whole new family. They’re not gangsters. They’re just everyday people, and that’s a whole different paradigm.”
Taylor Sheridan infuses humor into his new series, ‘Tulsa King’
Tulsa King comes from the creative mind of Taylor Sheridan, the co-creator of Paramount’s massively popular series Yellowstone. Sheridan has also worked on several other streaming service series, including Mayor of Kingstown and Yellowstone’s prequel 1883.
Though Tulsa King is about a member of the mafia, Sheridan places him in an amusing situation. “I actually wanted to work with Sylvester Stallone for a while,” he said in the featurette. “This was an idea that I had — a gangster being sent from New York to middle America to establish the mob’s influence in that area. What an absurd comedy of errors that would be.”
The trailer and other teasers give fans a brief view into this comedy of errors. Dwight, for example, seems to not understand what a dispensary is or that weed is legal in many areas of the country. He also tells a dumbfounded pair of Tulsa natives that he really doesn’t go to church.
Additionally, filming for the series took place in Oklahoma, which gave the cast something in common with Dwight’s feeling of being an outsider. “The cast is not from here, so we all relate to Dwight,” Andrea Savage, who plays Stacy Beale in the series, said in the featurette. “We’ve all been thrown into Oklahoma, and we’re all fish out of water.”
Sheridan works alongside ‘The Sopranos’ EP Terence Winter
Sheridan is joined by The Sopranos’ executive producer Terence Winter in co-creating Tulsa King. Winter, of course, brings experience working on a show about the mafia.
“Terence is someone whose work I’ve admired, and I felt that he had a real keen understanding of this world and would appreciate a real fresh look at it,” Sheridan said.
“Everybody responds to the mob genre,” Winter added. “And taking that idea and those characters and placing them in a place where you’d never encounter them — It might as well be another planet.”
Tulsa King premieres Nov. 13 on Paramount+.
