Sly himself on small screen
Unlike his famous film characters, Stallone plays smooth talker written with his personality in mind in TV series
Sylvester Stallone needs an introduction about as much as Rambo needs a bigger knife, or Rocky another punch to the head. But he did want to clarify one thing about himself during an October interview ahead of the recent debut of his new Paramount+ series “Tulsa King.”
Those roles that had made him famous? Those guys weren’t really him. Sure, they were tough, and he is tough — at 76, he is still jacked, still doing many of his own stunts, still Sly. But the physical demands notwithstanding, the acting part was kind of easy, he admitted, particularly after so many rounds, so many sorties: eight Rocky movies, five for Rambo.
“It’s really kind of simple to hide behind Rambo or Rocky,” he said — and here he offered a quick and uncanny “How you doin’?,” something like an impression of an impression of his own acting.
“With this fellow here,” he said of his “Tulsa King” character, a silver-tongued gangster named Dwight Manfredi, “you have to be clever.” He also had to be something else he wasn’t used to being on camera.
“The hardest thing in acting is to be yourself,” he said, adding, “And I would say at my age, right now,
I’m probably doing my best work because I’m actually playing me.”
That is, of course, the kind of thing actors say. But it’s hard to imagine a better vehicle for Stallone to be himself. As the faded but still formidable Manfredi, he gets to play tough while embracing his own intelligence and idiosyncrasies, and “Tulsa King” caters to many of the same people who grew up watching him brawl and slay his way through the ’80s.
Taylor Sheridan created the series. Like Sheridan’s hit cowboy drama “Yellowstone” (created with John Linson), “Tulsa King” promises to be an easy-chair favorite — blending time-honored, dad-approved elements like the Western, the gangster flick, a little nonthreatening soapiness, a little mild political incorrectness and a lot of Stalloneness.
For Stallone, “Tulsa King” offers a chance to try some new things: It is his first major role on TV and his first serious role as a mobster — in this case, a crime family capo who has just finished serving
25 years in prison and must relocate to expand operations in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But it is also in line with a gradual change evident in his recent work, notably the “Creed” films. Stallone is older now, his catalog of injuries is legendary and his roles have been evolving. The world has evolved, too, including the audience for his particular breed of post-war American he-man — he of the star-spangled boxing trunks and Sammy Hagar soundtrack. The younger film heroes in his wake — they of the spandex
suits and green screens — make different movies now, tailored carefully by global conglomerates to avoid injuring their stars or offending Chinese censors. What’s a commie-crushing action star to do?
The answer, it seems, has been to adapt. But within limits. Case in point: A “Tulsa King” scene he shared on his phone involved another man’s face and a very hot electric stovetop.
“I believe when you’re going to do violence, really do memorable violence,”
he said.
A longtime horse enthusiast, Stallone first met Sheridan at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, he said, back when Sheridan was better known as an actor. Several years later, after becoming one of Hollywood’s most in-demand screenwriters, Sheridan reached out with a pilot script about “the ultimate fish out of water: gangster goes west,” Stallone said. (Sheridan was not available for comment.)
Stallone, meanwhile, said he had always wanted to play a serious gangster, ever since he was rejected from being an extra in “The Godfather.” (“Oscar,” his 1991 mob comedy, didn’t scratch the itch.) He signed on as the lead and an executive producer, and Sheridan handed off showrunning duties to Terence Winter, whom Stallone had long admired for his work on “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Sopranos.”
Winter revised the pilot and began writing and overseeing subsequent episodes with Stallone in mind.
“It’s such a gift when you’re writing something with an actor already attached to it,” Winter said. “You’ve got that voice and that physicality in your mind. So this was really already tailor-made for Sly.”
In their day, Rocky and Rambo stood for a certain segment of American men in the post-Vietnam, postindustrial era who bore the scars of violence, neglect, loss of livelihood and purpose. But they had figured out how to survive. However ridiculous some of the sequels became, the original “Rocky,” which Stallone wrote, and “First Blood,” which he co-wrote, are great movies with big and serious themes.
“I actually hate the word ‘action’ actor because I call it mythology,” Stallone said. No one was writing “The Odyssey” anymore, he continued, “but that mentality — we need mythological heroes.”
Viewed in this context, the appeal of “Tulsa King” for an old stallion like Stallone makes sense: When it comes to mythological Hollywood heroes, not even Avengers can compete with cowboys and gangsters.
Stallone can’t play heroes exactly the way he used to, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. “It’s almost unforgivably egotistical if you think you’re going to walk out and be faster than some 21-year-old Green Beret,” he said. “I’ve had to come to terms with that.” But neither has he hung up his spurs, even if his characters now must reckon honestly with the losses and limits of age.
Humility has become more profound, Stallone said, as he grows older and life becomes more and more about loss. Children grew up and left. Marriages got rocky. Bodies aged. Friends died.
“From 45 down, it’s subtraction,” he said. “And how do you deal with subtraction?”
Minutes later, he answered his own question: You adjust. You go the distance. You rise up to the challenges. As an artist, he still believes in underdog stories, he said, in “man against the system, woman against the system, modern mythology, rising above.” The fight may not look or feel the way it used to, but you keep fighting anyway. (“The Expendables 4”?
Due next year.)
And what do you do when they stack the odds against you?
“You sink or swim,” he said.