| A Taylor Sheridan show with Sly and a Sopranos vet stirring the sauce? We’re seated. —Alex Pappademas, culture editor |
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Tulsa King Is Emily in Paris For Dudes (We Can Explain) |
Tulsa King, a show from the Taylor Sheridan Extended Universe, returns for its second season this Sunday, September 15th. GQ senior staff writer Gabriella Paiella initially tuned in out of ironic curiosity—and, before she knew it, blazed through the entire first season. Here, she makes the case for giving yourself over to the Tulsa King phenomenon to GQ senior culture editor Alex Pappademas.
Gaby, as you may be aware, people have watched 3.36 billion minutes of Tulsa King since the first season premiered. But for people who’ve maybe seen zero minutes, tell us what this show is and why we should be psyched that it’s back. What kind of stuff is Stallone’s character Dwight Manfredi mixed up in this season?
Tulsa King is a show in which Sylvester Stallone plays a mobster who gets out of prison after 25 years and is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where everyone he encounters has never met an Italian-American guy from New York before.
That’s honestly the sell! But, to elaborate, Dwight Manfredi is preposterously charismatic and resourceful, so even if he’s been banished out West to start an Oklahoma branch of the Mafia, he does manage to befriend (and/or strongarm) kind strangers to help him along the way. He (illegally) gets into the (legal) weed business—with a dispensary owner partner played by the delightfully deadpan Martin Starr—has a romantic entanglement with an ATF agent, and is dodging various enemy factions. There’s a lot of pleasure in seeing him systematically succeed. This is all peppered with regular “What’s the deal with the modern world” boomer encounters, exacerbated by the fact that he’s spent so much time behind bars. (This season, Dwight meets the country rapper Jelly Roll and calls him “Jellyfish.”)
The season one finale landed him back in the slammer, while season two pulls him back out and has him dealing with new bad actors and a Mafia family back home that absolutely does not have his best interests at heart. Plus, a wind-turbine-energy subplot. The whole thing is, per usual, drenched in testosterone.
Watching season two, I had the earth-shattering epiphany that Tulsa King is Emily in Paris for men: a fish out of water in a new place faces challenge after challenge while ultimately succeeding and winning over its people through charm and occasionally insane outfits.
We’ve never talked about this: Are you a Sly person? (I feel like there are Sly people and Arnold people.) And— either way— does this show make you see him differently? (Stallone has said the character is very close to the real Sly, if he were a mobster.)
I weirdly wasn’t, just because I’m not a big eighties action movie person, period. But I don’t think the show would work, nor would I have been interested in it were it not Sly in the lead role. It feels very self-referential. Once you reach that legend status as an actor, everything you do is going to come with a certain amount of baggage and audience perception of your persona, and this absolutely works in his favor here.
Terence Winter, who’s back running the show this season after stepping away during season one, is probably best known for writing classic Sopranos episodes like “Pine Barrens” and “Long Term Parking” before going on to create Boardwalk Empire. Does Tulsa King feel like it has that prestige-TV blood in its veins? How does that quality manifest itself, and how does it mix with the Taylor Sheridan of it all?
I’m so glad you brought up Terence Winter because I’ve long believed that he’s the Tulsa King special sauce (marinara), despite it being much more straightforward than its prestige TV predecessors. (If I had to make a tonal comparison, it’s more akin to, say, Billions.) He obviously brings in Sopranos cred, and the knowledge of how to build the world of a crime drama and keep it flying episode after episode. But what Winter is really fantastic at is making use of That Guy actors. I mean, he had the vision to cast Steve Buscemi as the lead in Boardwalk Empire, and then packed that show to the gills with the highest caliber character actors. Tulsa King also features a rich tapestry of That Guy types—Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, plus a new baddie this season in the form of Neal McDonough. The way that this mixes with the Taylor Sheridan of it all is that there are a lot more horses than usual.
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