‘Tulsa King’ Boss Talks New Schemes, Tyson’s Downfall & What’s Next

The latest episode of Tulsa King saw yet another setback for Team Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone). Friday’s (November 13) installment, “Dinosaurs,” the General was caught in yet another shootout alongside Quiet Ray (James Russo), and this one couldn’t have come at a worse time; in their meeting just minutes before, Dwight questioned whether Quiet Ray was responsible for the last attack on him, and the New York mafioso was not convinced Dwight would kick up his share if he kept him alive anyway. Suffice it to say, bullets flying didn’t exactly alleviate the tension between them, but, fortunately, Quiet Ray later called and admitted that this time, the shots were meant for him. Still to be determined is whether they can find a peaceable arrangement or continue their blood feud.

Dwight also got a new reason to give a side-eye to Bill Bevilaqua (Frank Grillo) when Agent Musso (Kevin Pollak) used Bill’s signature line (“I wouldn’t trust him to piss on my cactus”) in their discussion. Was this a signal that Bill knows more about Dwight’s federal cooperation than he led on, or that Bill himself is a CI? We’ll see.

Making matters worse, Dwight’s first recruit, Tyson (Jay Will), also made a massive blunder at the wine auction when he overbid against real buyers, leaving the whole team holding the bag … er, the bottles instead of walking away with the millions they so desperately needed.

The one bright spot of this week’s episode came when Mitch (Garrett Hedlund), Spencer (Scarlet Rose Stallone), and Goodie (Chris Caldovino) discovered something very, very valuable hidden in the soil of the ranch: dinosaur bones. Could they have just accidentally unearthed a fortune when everything else has been going so badly for Dwight’s crew?

TV Insider caught up with Tulsa King showrunner Terence Winter to discuss the episode, the arc of Season 4 as a whole, and what’s still to come in the New York-based Season 5.

The last time I talked to you was for Season 2. Can you just talk about the journey coming back? And did this feel like a homecoming to you?

Terence Winter: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, after having sat out for the year, as a fan, it’s like you felt like really eager to get back in the game and just see what we were left with in terms of story and where we go from here. So it was really fun just getting handed off. It’s like, “OK, where are we? Where is everybody?”

For me, it kind of felt obvious where we wanted to go because it was like, “Wow, well, things are going great, too great for Dwight. He ends Season 3, and he’s on top of the world, and business is great, and he’s in love, and everybody’s happy.” And it’s like, “Well, can’t have that. So what does it look like when things aren’t going so well?” So, Sly and I talked about, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” And the worst thing that happens; you lose somebody you love. And, “OK, well then, what does that look like, and what are the ramifications of that?” Then, as the story progresses, “Oh, OK, it kind of ties into the governor and this new straight arrow who’s now going to cut him off at the knees business-wise, and then complications ensue from there.”

Yeah, I love it because I did agree with you. At the end of Season 3, it did seem like, “Oh, he’s about to be an almost billionaire.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Season 4 would have been set on the beach in Hawaii, and there’s not a whole lot to do if things progressed in the way they did. But life doesn’t work that way.

Absolutely. So, just piggybacking on that, are we going to find out more about what actually happened to Margaret and Cal before the season is over?

Yes.

Okay. Good. So, you obviously have a long, storied history with the mafia and television, and I feel like we’re seeing that played out this season in a way we haven’t before, not just with Quiet Ray, but with the other bosses as well. How fun was that for you to expand the purview of the bosses and bring all of them together for the first time?

Well, it’s great. It’s great. I mean, you get to see beyond the narrow world we’ve built in Tulsa, especially when you reach out to other places. There’s a whole universe playing out off-camera that is existing, and these are people Dwight knows, and sort of inhabit that world. So it’s really fun to be able to go take the action out of where we were, back to the world Dwight came from, and to see, “Oh yeah, these are people who are his adversaries — in some cases his friends” — and to say, “Oh, this is all happening in the background, and it affects him in Tulsa as well.”

Yeah, and of course, still at the center of it are Dwight and Bill, and their tension really seems to be bubbling up. I liked in this episode how Musso makes the comment about, “I wouldn’t let him piss on my cactus.” That’s the third time we’ve heard that in this season. Can you just talk about what that means, where this is headed between them?

Dwight and Bevilaqua were both gangsters. Obviously, they’re very similar. They are the flip sides of the same coin, really. They’re both chess players. I wouldn’t necessarily trust either one of them, and if I were both of them, I wouldn’t go to sleep in the same room with the other one without one eye open. So you really can’t take anything either one of them says at face value to each other. So, I mean, that’s about as much as I can give you in terms of where this is going. But I would not necessarily trust either of those guys in terms of what they say to each other.

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On a similar note, we see Dwight and Ray engaged in yet another shootout. This time, it seems like Ray might be at a breaking point over it until he makes that call that it was somebody coming after him. Can you kind of give a teaser of where that’s heading now that that’s kind of simmered again?

Yeah, I mean, it simmered, but Ray is just perpetually greedy, and you know he’s perpetually going to be an adversary. I think he will never get over the fact that, in his mind, he is the boss, and Dwight left. He took over that family that Dwight is supposed to be a part of, and whatever Dwight does, he owes him somehow. He will never ever let that go. And as much as things have simmered down in terms of, OK, well he knows Dwight didn’t try to kill him, he still just wants what he wants and is just completely unreasonable, and he’ll go to kind of any lengths to get it.

I wanted to talk about one theme this season with the data center. Obviously, that’s extremely topical right now in the real world. Did you know that’s where society was heading? That this would become kind of a villain of the real world?

Yeah, I know. I kind of inadvertently had my finger on the pulse of where things are ahead of you. We had read a lot about what was going on in Oklahoma and that there are a lot of these data centers that are being built, and that it’s very controversial, and people weren’t happy about it. And we thought, “Oh, that’s an interesting area to explore” — as was the dinosaur head. I had been at a barbecue. Somebody was talking about dinosaurs, and I said, “Wow, what are they? The dinosaurs in Oklahoma? That would be interesting.”

So, you sort of just think about Oklahoma and what might happen there. But the data centers, yeah, that was like, “Well, that would be a really interesting thing to explore.” And then it just so happened during the course of the year and leading into this year that became even a big political issue, not just in Oklahoma but other states as well.

So I’m glad you mentioned the dinosaur bun scene because it does seem like it may give cover to Mitch and Spencer and obviously Dwight over this land grab that the governor is trying to do with the billionaire. Can you tease how that’s going to factor into that conflict?

I can’t really, but it plays out in an interesting way that’s not necessarily in the area you’re talking about.

I wanted to talk about Tyson. This season has been really interesting because his arc throughout the series, he’s always been the innocent guy that stumbled into this world. But this season, he seems to be going into a downward spiral in some ways, and then succeeding in his own right in others. Can you talk about just where he’s at and what it’s going to take for him to get back into Dwight’s good graces, especially after this auction blunder?

Yeah, I mean, he’s always like two steps forward, one step back. Just when you think he’s making progress, he reminds you that, “Oh yeah, no, he’s just an impulsive young guy who just gets caught up in the moment and sort of just takes matters into his own hands when he shouldn’t.” Dwight is very paternalistic toward Tyson, and, like most parents, gives him a really long leash and lets him screw up continually. I think Dwight, as you’ll see, is sort of even getting to the end of his rope as well. But I think as the season progresses, you’ll see Tyson redeem himself in several ways, and not to say that he’s perfect and doesn’t still screw up, but I think as the season and the series progresses, you’ll see Tyson come into his own a little bit more.

Nice. There have been some interesting new endeavors for the characters to deal with. Can you talk about how you came up with the wine scheme, and then just some of the other things that they’re working on this season?

Yeah, the wine — there was a documentary probably 10 years ago about a guy who did that kind of scam where he was bottling real wine but not nearly as expensive as the wine he purported it to be, and then was selling these bottles for 10s of 1000s of dollars at auction, and it was when the economy was booming, and people weren’t really looking very closely. And then suddenly somebody realized, like, “Oh, wait a minute, this label isn’t quite right,” or, “This vintage never existed,” et cetera, et cetera. So I was like, “Wow, that’s a real fun scam for our guys to get involved with.” And say, “All right, well, how would that work?” And it played out on the show where Dwight was almost the victim of this thing. So yeah, it was a real fun thing.

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And then, the horse race thing, too. We obviously have the ranch, and we’re in and around horses all the time. And we’ve always talked about doing something in the racing world. We thought, “All right, well, what do criminals do with horses?” And there’s obviously race fixing. And how does that work? We thought, “Oh, that might be a fun way to earn money as well.” Same thing with burning the cars and swapping them out for the real ones. And we’re just always researching, “How do criminals make money?” And it’s amazing. There are just people who, 24 hours a day, are out there just thinking of stuff like this. Instead of just getting actual jobs, they’re like, “That’s your job. How do I scam things?” We find out what they are, and we write about them.

Are you staying on for Season 5, and if so, what can you tease about the direction we’re heading with that location change? 

Yeah, I am. I am on Season 5. I’m actually writing the last few episodes of Season 5 as we speak. I’m in New York City right now. We are shooting the series in New York City in Season 5, which is great because now we get to do this reverse fish-out-of-water thing where we take all our guys from Oklahoma and drop them in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, and that’s great fun. It’s also really fun for Dwight because this is a New York City he’s coming back to that he doesn’t really recognize as much. He’s visited over the course of the seasons, but he hasn’t really lived here for a long time. So the New York he left back in the ’90s, most of the people who were there are gone, and the people who are here now, who, in some cases, even work for him in the Mob family, don’t even know him. So he’s coming back to a place where he doesn’t really have friends and family. His friends and family are the people who came with him from Oklahoma. So it’s an interesting way to explore coming back to the city. But it’s great seeing these characters with that visual backdrop and being able to shoot at iconic locations around the city, and seeing our Tulsa people in those scenes. It’s just been great.

Tulsa King, Fridays, Paramount+