The pair grew up two states apart, both enthusiastic children of the West.
She was a ‘tomboy’ in Utah ‘always in the dirt’ and he the son of a Texas cardiologist who fell in love with ranching as a youthful part-time wrangler.
Nicole Muirbrook and Taylor Sheridan wouldn’t meet until adulthood in California, where they’d followed separate dreams of stardom – but when the actors’ paths crossed, it was a match made in cowboy culture heaven.
Bonding over their love of the arts, the West and frontier-value lifestyles, the pair began building even bigger dreams that combined all three – and the realization of those lofty aspirations has remarkably influenced the collective US consciousness.
Within a few short years of meeting Nicole, welcoming a son and getting married, Sheridan had established himself as an in-demand Hollywood screenwriter.
When his brainchild Yellowstone premiered in 2018, he also debuted one of the biggest cultural reference points in recent memory.
Now the Sheridans are living examples – albeit glamorous ones – of the worlds glorified by the Yellowstone-verse.
They own not one but two Texas ranches, moving in 2022 onto the legendary Four Sixes in Guthrie, which partly inspired the Western series itself.
Closer to Sheridan’s hometown of Fort Worth is their Bosque Ranch, where his wife presides over swanky Nic’s Bar and where they regularly host visitors from the ranching, business and showbiz worlds alike.
It’s hard to imagine that the Sheridans aren’t pinching themselves, remaining firmly on cowboy soil while laughing all the way to the bank – on back of dollars from Hollywood, a place the writer describes as ‘blind’ and where ‘logic’ is ‘nonexistent.’
Nicole, for her part, has performance in her blood; the 41-year-old’s mother was a Miss America runner-up, according to Cowgirl Magazine.
Growing up in suburban Salt Lake City, her love for action and Western ways seemed to overshadow those inclinations, however; she played basketball during high school and enjoyed riding horses for ‘hours and hours’ near her grandparents’ ranch in Wyoming, the magazine reported.
‘I was very much a tomboy,’ she told Cowgirl in 2021. ‘I never wanted to brush my hair. I was always in the dirt. Just super tomboy.’
Her looks, however, were striking; she was born to a blonde, green-eyed German mother and Mexican/Lebanese father, inheriting enviable bone structure as well as height – and it wasn’t long before she was noticed by a model scout in a Utah mall.
She signed with NEXT models and began working internationally, landing magazine covers like Vogue and Marie Claire.
By her early 20s, she was ready to try her hand at acting. Commercials for Old Navy jeans and other smaller gigs followed before she secured parts in How I Met Your Mother and films like 2009’s I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.
She briefly married another actor, Christian Wagner, but the union was short-lived – and it was acting again that would bring her into the orbit of Sheridan.
He had also come to LA to chase dreams of screen success, which he’d nurtured since high school when he starred as Kenickie in Grease and acted with Fort Worth’s Stage West Theatre, he told the city’s magazine.
But Sheridan was juggling dual passions; like his future wife, he’d loved spending time as a child at his grandparents’ ranch, though this one was near Waco.
He was thrilled when his own parents purchased a ranch in 1978 about 85 miles south of Fort Worth in Cranfills Gap, where he spent most holidays and weekends.
‘We didn’t depend on our ranch for income,’ Sheridan, now 55, told Texas Highways. ‘But it’s where I learned how to become a cowboy.’
His first job, the magazine reported, was at age 14 on another cattle ranch near Cranfills Gap, where he earned $400 a month and a bunk.
He was devastated when his mother sold the family ranch in 1991 following his parents’ divorce. ‘I don’t think Taylor spoke to me for a year,’ she told Texas Highways.
The future screenwriter was also somewhat adrift as he entered adulthood.
He dropped out of Texas State University at San Marcos and moved to Austin, where he found himself ‘mowing lawns and painting houses and trying to figure out what to do,’ he told the Austin American-Statesman in 2017.
Again mirroring Nicole’s path, a talent scout at a shopping mall changed his course.
He told the newspaper he was approached in Austin by a scout who invited him to Chicago, kicking off a career that brought him to LA, where he landed roles in Veronica Mars and Sons of Anarchy but didn’t initially find his niche.
‘I was a fair actor, but that’s all I was ever going to be,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter last year.
Still, he began acting coaching, which is how he met Nicole; they fell in love and welcomed their son, Gus, in 2010 – but the young family was struggling.
‘At the time it was like “Let’s just make enough to pay a mortgage or rent or food,” Nicole told Cowgirl. ‘That’s when Taylor started writing, and two years later, we were at the Oscars … I still can’t believe it.’
Screenwriting, it turned out – particularly when it involved Western storytelling – was Sheridan’s forte.
‘Hollywood will tell you what you’re supposed to do if you listen,’ he told THR. ‘If you’re banging your head against the wall for 20 years trying to be an actor, maybe you shouldn’t be an actor.
‘But the first thing I ever wrote [the pilot for Mayor of Kingstown in 2011] got me meetings at every major network, at every agency. I had multiple people trying to buy it.’
The script made Hollywood take notice of Sheridan, and the success of his first few films – Sicario in 2015, Hell or High Water in 2016 and Wind River the following year – cemented his reputation.
The 2018 premiere of Yellowstone, however, made him a bonafide Tinseltown power-player – a screenwriter who seemed to have the Midas touch. The appetite for modern Westerns was the cherry on top for the Texan.
‘I wanted to tell stories that mattered to me, and not tell other people’s stories,’ he told Cowboys & Indians. ‘I wanted to tell stories about my life and the lifestyle that I grew up in, and the world that I come from, and understand the value of the upbringing that I had.’
Hearkening back to that upbringing, he and Nicole tried living in Wyoming and Utah but ultimately returned to his home state, settling on the sprawling Bosque Ranch in Weatherford, Texas; his production company is named for the same location.
Nicole set to work customizing a bar on the property – Nic’s bar – and dutifully updates followers with eye-catching pictures of its progress on social media.
And as Sheridan’s influence grew, so too did the role of Texas (and his properties) in the Yellowstone-verse. He worked out a deal with the matriarch of 6666 Ranch, which features prominently in the series, to let Yellowstone film there; when she passed away a few months later, he received an offer to buy it – for $350million.
So Sheridan embarked upon some financial wrangling – in addition to signing a new contract reportedly worth $200million – and in 2022 Nicole posted an image of herself with Gus and her husband standing on the front steps of the famed Lone Star ranch residence.
‘Honoring and preserving a true western legacy. #home,’ she wrote in 2022.
In order to keep that legacy – and to fill his coffers – Sheridan presides over quite the intricate web of endeavors.
The Four Sixes and Bosque Ranch provide horses and filming locations for the Paramount+ shows, and more than a few ranch staff and prominent names from the horse industry have made cameos on screen.
The ranches also sell branded beef and are diversifying; Nicole happily posted in 2021 that Bosque Ranch had partnered with American Hat Company, and there’s currently a 6666 pop-up restaurant right now at the Wynn in Las Vegas.
Watch any of Sheridan’s creations on Paramount+, from Tulsa King to Landman, and you’ll see sleek but spur-heavy commercials for his ranches – touting dedication to values like hard work and authenticity.
The screenwriter was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2021, the same year his wife joined the board of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. She and the president of the board then came up with an idea for an 1883-themed exhibition in 2022; it marked a 200 percent increase in visitors.
Through it all, the Sheridans have remained hands-on, running events and competitions at their properties and even winning prizes themselves.
Nicole is particularly skilled at reining and cutting. In December 2020, she and her horse, Sweetie, won a charity cutting competition in Fort Worth – though she admitted to Cowgirl that she can still ‘get very humbled by riding.’
Bringing further attention to the sports and culture they love, supermodel Bella Hadid rode this January in a cutting event at Bosque Ranch.
Just last month, Nicole chaired a Fort Worth celebrity cutting competition in benefit of UT Southwestern, where her husband said she’d previously been treated.
The couple have seemed keen to support local Texas communities, with casting calls going out in Weatherford for Sheridan shows and the screenwriter bringing Yellowstone’s Season 5 premiere to Fort Worth in 2022.
He told the audience of locals, business partners, cast members and family that Paramount had offered several city locations for the premiere, including Dallas, which was ‘about 30 miles too far to the east,’ according to PaperCity magazine.
‘This time Hollywood comes to Fort Worth, instead of the other way around.’
That seems to be the driving mantra of Sheridan and his wife as they expand their ranch life enterprises – bring movie business glamor to Western culture and vice versa.
As he was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame last month – his wife at his side in a shimmering black gown – Sheridan only half-joked that he’d ‘achieved all of this with a paycheck from a bunch of Hollywood vegans.’
Along with other Lone Star heavyweights and inductees in the room, he said, he’d learned ‘the key to success is daring to fail, and the one ingredient you and you alone control is how hard you work at it … Let them say whatever they want. Then outwork them.’