Starting over: Sylvester Stallone finds new joy in “Tulsa King’ mob world

“I was getting lazy,” Stallone admits during a Zoom conference. “Then he became very, very successful with ‘Yellowstone,’” and the actor put the idea of collaboration on a back burner.

Case closed? Not quite. Sheridan had an idea for a mob series set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, called “Tulsa King.” He thought Stallone would be great as a mobster who’s released from prison and sent to Tulsa to run that branch of the business.

“He called me up, pitched it to me in like three seconds. I went, ‘I’m in,’” Stallone says. “It was very fast.”

Production wasn’t slow, either. Stallone, who’s also an executive producer, says they produced 10 episodes of the series in a matter of months. “It was the equivalent of doing five ‘Rockys’ in a row – five two-hour films with no break in between.”

Television, he adds, is “harder, faster and longer” than filmmaking. “You really have to be quick. You have to be mercurial. Most importantly, you have to keep your energy up.”

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While playing a gangster was always a dream (Stallone was rejected as one of the extras in “The Godfather”), he never gave up. What made Dwight Manfredi, his character in “Tulsa King,” even more interesting was his background. “This is a fella who’s very educated, reads Marcus Aurelius, reads Plato,” he says. “He’s a different animal than you would normally see in a ‘gangster’ film.”

Manfredi’s exile is a surprise because he was loyal, kept his mouth shut and took the rap for a murder.

“When he gets out of prison, he’s really expecting some adequate form of compensation,” says Executive Producer Terry Winter. “Instead, he’s informed by the boss’s son, who’s now in charge, that he’s being sent to Tulsa which, for him, might as well be another planet.”

There, he tries to rebuild a relationship with his daughter and form a crew out of folks not used to his New York ways.

“Tulsa King,” Stallone says, “is kind of like ‘Yellowstone.’ People get ‘Yellowstone’ because they understand the dynamics of what these characters are going through.”

While Stallone doesn’t have a relationship with actual gangsters (“Half my family are gangsters,” he jokes), “I grew up around a lot of these mugs and they’re very interesting. In Philadelphia, you’re always bumping shoulders with them, whether you want to or not, especially in South Philly. So I’ve got the temp, I’ve got the idea, I’ve got the attitude…and I understand the street life very, very well.”

What separates “Tulsa King” from other gangster productions is its mob. “My gang is made up of cowboys, Indians, women, you know, fellas that run a weed store. In other words, a group of complete misfits,” Stallone says. “That’s what makes it so unusual.”

Adding to that, Dwight is at an age where he’s questioning all of his life choices, Winter says. “Dwight is a very different man when he gets out of prison than when he went in. He spent the last 25 years basically working out and reading every day. He’s much more thoughtful, much more judicious in how he doles out violence. He’s trying to be a better person, trying to put his life back together and doing it in a way that I’ve never gotten a chance to explore before.”

Thanks to creators like Sheridan, television is a different medium these days. In the past, Stallone says, it was seen as the outback: “You’re in TV. You’re not going to make it film.”

Now, streaming services have made it attractive to actors who don’t want to commit to 22 episodes a year for six years.

“I’m glad I finally got an opportunity to jump on this train,” Stallone says. “And these actors…they get better and better. This has been one big pleasant surprise.”

“Tulsa King” begins Nov. 13 on Paramount+. 

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