Kevin Costner has been the face of “Yellowstone” since it debuted in 2018. As the head of the Dutton Yellowstone ranch,

John Dutton, Costner is undoubtedly part of the reason Paramount’s neo-Western series has become so popular. But it’s

not just Costner that has portrayed the Dutton patriarch. Josh Lucas plays a younger version of the character on the series

, and was actually approached about the role before “Yellowstone” even shot its pilot episode. This was just one of the elements that show creator Taylor Sheridan had mapped out ahead of time, too.

In a 2022 Deadline interview, Lucas recalled being told how, once the location for the Dutton Ranch was confirmed, Sheridan “walked around and pointed at certain points, and said, ‘This will happen here in season 1,’ and ‘This will happen here in season 2. And here’s where the graveyard goes.’” The “A Beautiful Mind” and “Sweet Home Alabama” actor remembered being impressed with how meticulously Sheridan had his show planned out before it even premiered. What’s more, it seems the show creator had big plans for young John Dutton, telling Lucas that “It’s going to be in the fifth season. The fifth season is where you’re gonna come in.”

That’s exactly how it happened, too. Season 5, part 1 of “Yellowstone” delves into John Dutton’s past more extensively than any of the flashbacks in prior seasons, providing a much more expansive backstory for the character just as star Kevin Costner was wrapping up his time on the show. Last year, it was confirmed that Costner would not return for the long-awaited “Yellowstone” season 5, part 2. It’s fitting, then, that season 5 essentially saw John’s life flashing before our eyes before he departed, as if Sheridan had a vision of Costner’s exit in the pre-pilot days and wrote a visual eulogy for the character years before he actually left the show.

More surprising still is that, despite depicting a young John Dutton throughout the series, Josh Lucas has never actually spent time with Kevin Costner on the set of “Yellowstone.”

Why Josh Lucas and Kevin Costner were kept separate on Yellowstone

Paramount

There’s a long history in Hollywood of actors being kept separate while working on the same project. James Earl Jones and Eddie Murphy were never in the same room while filming “Coming to America 2” and Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t film a single scene with his “Batman & Robin” co-stars. In the latter’s case, it was all down to scheduling and time-saving. But there have been much more controversial reasons for actors being kept apart on-set.

Thankfully, in Josh Lucas and Kevin Costner’s case, it seems there was no controversy afoot. Instead, there was a much more practical reason for keeping the actors separate. In a 2021 Collider interview (via Looper), Lucas explained how he and his elder are “almost kept separate on purpose,” and how Costner is “not there when I’m shooting.” He continued:

“Taylor [Sheridan] and I talked about the idea of ‘The Godfather.’ When [Robert] De Niro was playing Brando, he wasn’t attempting to look or act like Marlon Brando. He was attempting to play [a younger Don Vito Corleone]. That’s what we talked about.”

It seems that, put simply, both Sheridan and Lucas were both attempting to keep the latter from doing a Kevin Costner impression with his version of John Dutton. As Lucas put it in his Deadline interview, the two characters “need to have the essence of each other,” but the actors themselves don’t necessarily need to meet in order for that to happen.

Josh Lucas was very much doing his own thing as John Dutton