Marshals Showrunner Spencer Hudnut on What Makes the Show Work and Why Kayce’s Next Chapter Couldn’t Be Easy

When I first heard Kayce Dutton was getting pulled out of Yellowstone and dropped into something that sounded a little more procedural, I wasn’t convinced. Yellowstone worked because it felt mythic, messy, and sprawling. But Kayce wandering into a case-of-the-week format? I just wasn’t sure.

And then I watched it, and I kind of sat there thinking… well, damn.

Spencer Hudnut, showrunner and co-creater alongside Taylor Sheridan and David Glasser — who spent seven years building the boots-on-the-ground intensity of SEAL Team — is the perfect man to lead Marshals, and we had a chance to talk to him about what’s ahead.

Hi, Spencer. Thank you so much for talking with me today.

Of course. Good to see you.

Good to see you. So honestly, I was skeptical of Kayce being in a kind of procedural style show away from the Yellowstone. You have been vindicated. I absolutely love it.

Oh, thank you. Love hearing that.

You spent years building the ground-and-boots-on-the-ground intensity of SEAL Team, which has a very different audience than Yellowstone.

Did bringing that sensibility into Marshals feel like a natural progression for you? And do you see the series as a bridge for viewers between SEAL Team and the Yellowstone universe?

You know, that’s a very good question. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that I was on SEAL Team for seven years and that Kayce Dutton was a Navy SEAL. David Glasser and the people at 101 may have noticed some overlap there.

I was a fan of Yellowstone. I was a viewer. Kayce was always the character I related to the most, rooted for the most, and cared about the most. And we definitely have brought some of our storytelling from SEAL Team into this world.

You know, it’s funny: when I talked to Luke the first time about the show, he had the idea that the spinoff would just be Kayce’s time as a Navy SEAL, sort of all in flashbacks about being a Navy SEAL.

The pilot opens with a Navy SEAL sequence, which was Luke’s idea. There was no way I was going to, the first script I ever wrote was going to start with Navy SEALs running through Afghanistan. But Luke had this fantastic idea of how to start the pilot that way.

So he was really the one who wanted to embrace his Navy SEAL past. And, again, we wanted to make this a tactical show.

We wanted the same propulsive engine SEAL Team had. And similarly, we wanted to get to tell stories about first responders, the people who are willing to run into the fire and the consequences of doing jobs like that. So there is a fair amount of overlap.

Yellowstone explored a lot of that as well. The consequences of violence are a big theme that Taylor explores across his work. Absolutely, I would say there are some parallels and some overlap, so it’s a hybrid of a few different genres.

You know, I have to ask: the footage we’ve seen so far teases major emotional consequences for Kayce and Monica.

When you’re working with a universe that’s this well-known, how do you decide which relationships to preserve and which to challenge, and how to push characters to move forward?

Obviously, that was the biggest decision from the start. Kayce, Monica, and Tate had such a beautiful ending on Yellowstone. So that was one of the challenges.

You know, one of the first things that Luke said to me was, “OK, well, what are we going to do in a spinoff?” Because Kayce has everything he wants, and he’s super happy and at peace at the end of Yellowstone, as he should be. And he earned that.

And that was a great journey. And so it wasn’t necessarily like a decision that I made or Luke made that was like, [this story’s not] going to continue forward. It was sort of out of our hands.

But it did feel like a true hero’s journey has to come out of tragedy. So we had to shake up his world a little bit to get him on this new path.

I don’t think we step on that ending of Yellowstone. It was beautiful. They got what they wanted. Unfortunately, real life intervened.

As Kayce steps into a new role as a marshal, he’s still tied to a ranch. It’s not the Yellowstone, but how important is it to maintain that sense of continuity for him that he is still a part of the land, and yet he is on this new journey as well?

I think the land is what really ties him to the Dutton legacy. That still hangs over him for better and for worse. East Camp was part of the Dutton ranch in the past. As much as he’s tried to rid himself of the Yellowstone, here he still is.

And I think that comes with demons. It’s a lot for Kayce to try to overcome. What’s great for our show is that it also allows us to continue to tap into what so many viewers love, which is just seeing Kayce Dutton on horseback in the Montana wilderness, which is pretty epic.

We’re definitely going to do that as often as we can.

And we have to talk about how Yellowstone fans are going to be thrilled by some of the subplots. Were there any restrictions? Obviously, Taylor Sheridan is part of this project, but were there any restrictions on what Yellowstone materials you could use?

And will that inclusion of revisiting where he’s been, as well as where he’s going, continue as the series progresses? Or is that more to establish the series from the start?

There were really no restrictions. They had such beautiful cinematography. We weren’t able to get some of the stock shots I wanted, but no, Taylor was never like, “you can’t do this, you can’t do that.”

For me and for Luke and everyone involved, we don’t want start altering storylines from that show. Kayce is at peace with John Dutton when he’s standing over his father’s grave at the end of that series. I don’t want to start relitigating that.

So I think we need to be respectful of the great stories that Taylor told. I think there are things —obviously, Kayce’s backstory — which we can build off of. And I think we would be fools to sort of turn our backs on what was. I can’t think of a character on television with this strong, sort of twisted backstory as Kayce Dutton.

I think we’re trying, where we can, to build off things from Yellowstone, but not relitigate things.

I think it really works. I think so anyway. And I think fans are going to agree with me because I covered Yellowstone all those years.

I look forward to hearing from them next week!

Rainwater and Mo kind of felt adjacent to the story on Yellowstone, but here they feel more woven into the fabric of the series. Can you talk a little bit about that and how we continue their story and their legacy here on Marshals?

I was so honored that Gil and Mo came to join this show. I think any connection to Yellowstone is so great for us, but those were such incredible characters.

Honestly, writing Chairman Rainwater was probably the most intimidating part of this process because everything he said on Yellowstone was so brilliant. That was a little bit of a challenge.

One of my favorite scenes in the entire Yellowstone series was the one on the porch at East Camp between Kayce and Rainwater, where they become brothers when Kayce sells him the ranch.

And that was just so clearly something to build off of, to really evolve that relationship.

And with everything that Kayce has lost in his life, with his dad and with his brothers and just having so little family around him now, it just felt like Mo and Rainwater are kind of the natural sort of surrogate family.

And so, really exploring that and the fact that Kayce now has a badge again, and he’s going to be dealing with cases that maybe overlap into Broken Rock, will also put the two of them at odds at times. And so it allows us to challenge that relationship, too.

And of course, we’re introduced to new characters, including the amazing Logan Marshall-Green as Pete Calvin, who I absolutely adore. And Arielle Kebbel as Belle is probably in one of her best roles in recent years. She’s utilized so well here.

And all of the Marshals’ characters feel totally lived in, and like I’ve known them for a while. How did you make them feel so comfortable so early? I’m sure you saw it too, as you were creating these stories, that it isn’t just like we’re being dumped into something. They’re fully fleshed out.

I think that a lot of that credit goes to these actors. Talk about the power of the Yellowstone brand. I got my first choice across the board, and people whom I never thought I would get.

Arielle had been in a show that my wife produced many years ago. So when I wrote Belle, she was exactly who I had in my head, but it’s like, we won’t get her. And Logan. I’ve been a fan of him for so long. We won’t get him. And so we got them.

I think what was really helpful was this notion of Kayce reconnecting with an old teammate.

Having been around a lot of these special forces operators over the last decade of my life, you do see how those friendships last. They may not see each other for six months or six years, but it picks up right away, and that bond is for life.

I think my time on SEAL team allowed that relationship [between Kayce and Cal] to feel lived in, as you say. And again, I give credit to the actors.

I described the Belle character as Martha Stewart in cowboy boots. Arielle sends a picture through her agent on horseback with Martha Stewart. [chuckles] Ash Santos is playing Andrea, who is from the Bronx, and her dad’s a cop. Ash Santos is from the Bronx, and her dad’s a cop. So I give them full credit for it.

So they feel natural in the roles, as much as they look natural to me watching them.

And Logan’s just, you know, Logan’s just…

Logan’s Logan. [laughs]

[chuckles] Yeah.

What a great on-screen partnership having Luke and Logan together. Love it.

If you had to describe the emotional narrative arc of the season in a few sentences, what journey are the characters really on this season?

When we find this team, they’re a bunch of individuals. Cal and Andrea have come here from different areas. They’re new to the area.

This is really about this group of people coming together to do a very high-stress, very dangerous job. They do the hardest job in the world. So how do they bring that home to their personal lives? Can they bring it home to their personal lives, or do you have to really open yourself up to your teammates?

So I think it’s this journey of this group of individuals coming together as this found family by the end of the season. That’s a big step for Kayce because family has always been sort of a bad word. He has so much loss in his life.

You would understand if he had sort of his guard up. So, with all the loss in his life, finding and embracing this group of people is a big part of his journey.

And I think, as you said at the beginning of the interview, it does hearken back to his past. He felt camaraderie with his SEAL team that he didn’t feel with his family. And it’s like he was always trying to get back to that, but he didn’t know how to do it.

On Yellowstone, he never had the bunkhouse. He never he was not part of that group. He didn’t have that camaraderie, and he was always sort of on the wrong side of the fence with his dad and even with his siblings.

And so, what we get to do down the road — and here’s a little sneak peek — in Marshals Season 2 Episode 11 is we actually revisit Kayce’s time as a SEAL. And we see that brotherhood, and we see him and Cal and two of their teammates together. And just you see a different Kayce Dutton.

You see a guy who’s smiling and who feels like, for the first time, he’s around people who are watching his back and not necessarily going to put a brand on him for making a bad choice.

And is that the Kayce Dutton we’ll see as the series progresses? Are we going to finally see a side of him that isn’t struggling with darkness?

I think that’s the Kayce Dutton we want to unlock.

And I think it’s giving a glimpse of what it was like for him before. And yes, we will see his understanding and coming to trust his teammates and realize that he has a group of people around him who are going to watch his back, much like his SEAL teammates did.

We will definitely get more than glimpses of that. But again, he’s Kayce Dutton. Violence and tragedy tend to find him.

As Luke said, watching Kayce be happy is kind of boring.

We need to see just a fraction every day, every once in a while. He was one of the Yellowstone characters who struggled the most with it.

[laughs] So we don’t want a sad cowboy for 120 episodes.

What do you think will surprise viewers the most whenever they first tune into Marshals?

Oh my gosh, I have no expectations for this show. I don’t know what everyone’s bringing to it. I hope what surprises them is that they can connect with these characters.

My hope is that they realize that the show is a crime procedural in one way. And yes, it’s from Yellowstone. But I think it’s hopefully able to strike a balance between those two brands. And at the end of the day, I hope people realize that the show has a soul and that it’s about something.

It’s not just about Kayce’s journey, but about a group of people willing to sacrifice for the greater good and the cost that comes with it.

It’s got soap elements, and it’s got action elements, but at the end of the day, hopefully, it’s also about people who are the best of us.

And your wait isn’t so long anymore! You can dive headfirst into Kayce Dutton’s next chapter on Marshals, premiering on Sunday, March 1, at 9/8c on CBS, and on Paramount+ on March 2.

We’ll have a full review after the episode, so come back to TV Fanatic to read all about Marshals Season 1 Episode 1. For now? You’ve got my two thumbs up. Give it a try!