by Gill Pringle in LA
If the casual viewer might imagine that Sylvester Stallone’s hit crime series Tulsa King is just another addition to Taylor Sheridan’s burgeoning TV empire – one that includes Yellowstone, 1923, Landman, Mayor of Kingstown and Special Ops: Lioness among others – then it’s surprising to learn that the two men crossed paths more than two decades ago on very different terms.
“Oddly enough, I met him when I had a couple of old horses. And he would be up at the barn, so I’d be talking to this guy, and it was like talking to a younger me. And we’re talking about writing and I said, ‘why don’t you help me write the last Rambo?’ And he goes, ‘Really?’ And I go, ‘Yeah,’” recalls the iconic Rocky and Rambo star about the supporting actor turned writer, director and show-running powerhouse.
“And I barely knew him. And he goes, ‘Write Rambo!?’ And then he says, ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m writing a movie called Sicario and I’m going to see if I have it or not’,” reveals Stallone today.
“So, he wrote Sicario, and he found the golden key. This is so much more important than being a regular actor. Actors, yes, I like them – but writers are precious. So, through failure, like me, he discovered incredible success.
“Taylor Sheridan and I, we’ve sort of paralleled our careers. I was failing as an actor because I was a different type. Like, sort of alpha, but I had a speech impediment, so it just wasn’t working.
“And Taylor Sheridan [below in Yellowstone] was also always kind of kept out in the distance, out in the cold. He was never given a part to really show what he had. And then, he complained about it, and he was put out,” he says.
Like Sheridan, Stallone has always found value in being under-estimated and, to this day, he loves nothing more than when folk say he’s all washed-up and his career is over.
Because – just like his Rocky and Rambo anti-heroes – he relishes the challenge of getting up again when everyone has counted him out.
“When they say, ‘he must be at the end of his career’ or ‘he’s a has-been’, I love that, because that wakes me up in the morning. I go ‘yeah! Keep saying that. Keep getting me aggravated’,” growls the Hollywood icon who discovered an unlikely reincarnation within Tulsa King, now in its third season with a fourth in the works.
“Everyone was sceptical. ‘Can he do it?’ ‘Why is Stallone doing TV?’ And, in the first year, you are jumping out of an airplane with no parachute, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Stallone, 79, who plays New York mafia boss Dwight Manfredi.
“And that goes for everybody. When people are challenged, that’s when you wake up,” says the superstar who also had another wake-up call when he found that everything he held dear – his marriage and family – was also on the line after his wife, model Jennifer Flavin filed for divorce in 2022, only to reconcile months later.
“I always considered the worst, most fatal disease in the world is the disease of loneliness. Isolation is so sad,” he laments.
“God forbid, laying alone at night again. Loneliness and having nobody is a terrifying thing, that you don’t have anyone to share your hopes and your fears with.
“And I didn’t always put family first. I was a workaholic. I was dead set.
“But no family? I’ve made that a priority now. And since I’ve done that, everything seems to have gotten more responsible and important – like love. And when I look at my daughters now, I say: ‘I’m not going to be here forever.’ So, I really study them. Listen to them. Love them. You are going to disappear someday, sad but true.
“So, use these opportunities to really focus on what’s important – not on a movie, which is nice and everything – but life, because they’re going to remember you for the rest of their life, and they need their father, you need your mother, you need these people.
“And I used to be very superficial. I thought work was important. But it’s second,” says the thrice-wed actor who shares three daughters with Flavin – Sophia, 29, Sistine, 27, and Scarlet, 23.
Today, it is his youngest daughter, Scarlet, who joins him among Tulsa King’s impressive cast, which also features Annabella Sciorra, Kevin Pollak, James Russo, Frank Grillo and Australia’s own Bella Heathcote.
Looking back over a career spanning six decades, Stallone says that “it’s very intoxicating, it’s an altered state, and you are treated special. And you have two choices – one is horrible and one is good. One is to be grateful and empathetic and say, ‘I could have had so many different choices in life, and I was on the edge of failure. Now I can provide, but I have to be grateful.’
“I look at that man over there and he’s working on a truck, or he’s in a restaurant washing dishes. He doesn’t want to do that. He didn’t say ‘oh, I can’t wait to be born and work in a hot, steaming oven or shovel coal.’
“So, I have taught my daughters… I say, ‘you are so fortunate, so the only thing I’m begging you to be is sympathetic. Just be empathetic, because 90% of the people are doing things that they have to do. They don’t want to do them, but they have to survive. They have responsibilities, which I think is incredibly noble.’”
If facing the end of his marriage was a major jolt, then his numerous painful surgeries – a result of years of stunt work – was another wake-up call.
“I had gotten very, very injured many times. I’ve had eight back operations and three neck fusions. I’ve almost been paralyzed. I’ve just pushed myself too far, and I was going in for another operation. And I felt, ‘oh, this could be bad. This could be the one where I sign out.’ And I got all sad and misty and thoughtful, and I said, ‘If I survive this’ – which was like a very bad neck thing – ‘I will never be the same. I promise you, I promise to God, I will change.’
“And that was it. Usually, it takes some transformative moment to wake you up and knocking on death’s door will do it. That’s definitely a wake-up call,” says the three-time Oscar nominated legend whose gritty memoir, The Steps, will be published in 2026.
With an estimated net worth of US$400 million, he argues that money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness. “It’s like Mark Twain said: the lack of money is the root of all evil – but apathy is horrible.
“So why did you accumulate all this money, if you’re still a miserable human being? And I find this to be true quite often, when people acquire great wealth. The assumption is that with great wealth comes great happiness. Happiness is free. You can go to some of the slums of the world, and people are smiling; people who have nothing. And then you could go to some kingdom, some mansion, and you just see apathy,” argues Stallone who refuses to sit on his laurels, currently working on eight new projects.
“Also, what’s driving me is I want to do it better, and I want to be more sincere, more emotional, spiritual, because something’s happening in my life, in my brain.
“And I think it’s called wisdom of what’s really important. Because, oh my God, I wish I knew 60 years ago what I know now. I’m not exactly young, but I’m going to try to put as much living into life as I can,” he says.
Riding high on his streaming renaissance with Tulsa King, he has plenty of advice for fellow TV or film makers. “I have seen an industry over 50 years collapse, literally implode on itself. It’s just slowly crumbling. And why is it crumbling? Because we’re not telling identifiable stories. We’re sending too many messages. This is not the post office. We don’t send messages. You try to entertain, you try to enlighten, and the last thing you want to do is go to a movie theater to get a lesson. I don’t.”
