Neal McDonough Says He’s Never Watched Himself in ‘Yellowstone’

Neal McDonough played one of the most coldblooded villains in the “Yellowstone” universe, but the 60-year-old actor says he has never once watched the show himself.

McDonough portrayed businessman Malcolm Beck across six episodes of the Taylor Sheridan series in Season 2. Despite the role’s popularity, he told the “Arroyo Grande” podcast he avoids watching any of his own work.

“I’ve never seen it. You know, I don’t watch any of my stuff,” McDonough said.

He explained that as a method actor, revisiting a performance can bring back exactly what he was thinking and feeling at the time, which he finds difficult to confront.

“If I look at a frame of a show from 20 years ago, I know exactly the thought I was thinking. I know the song I was thinking about. I know where I was going. So going back to me sometimes can be really kind of traumatic and painful,” he said.

The habit extends to his own film premieres. McDonough said he and his wife Ruvé walk the red carpet, then slip out before the screening.

“I’ll go to premieres of our films, and I’ll do the red carpet. Ruvé and I will walk in, out the exit, grab a nice dinner someplace, go to the party after. ‘How’d you like the movie?’ ‘It was great. It was awesome. I loved it.’ I just don’t like to watch myself,” he said.

McDonough said he doesn’t second-guess his performances afterward, trusting instead in the talent he believes was given to him.

“I was there on the day. I know I did a great job because God gave me a talent. I’m terrible at pounding nails. I’m not very good at telling jokes. But as Ruvé said, ‘Man, you can act.’ And so I don’t need to look to see if it was good or not. They keep on hiring me, right? If they keep on hiring, I must be doing something right,” he said.

A painful chapter

McDonough’s aversion to reliving his work follows a difficult period in his career. He has said he was fired from ABC’s “Scoundrels” in 2010 after refusing to perform intimate scenes with a female co-star, a decision he says derailed his career and strained him financially and personally.

“What time is the bar open? That was generally my thought process back then,” McDonough told Fox News Digital in May. “It was, you know, fired from a show because I wouldn’t kiss a woman. No one would hire me because they thought I was this religious nut bag, which is that I love my wife so much. And no one can understand it, no one could understand it.”

McDonough has also spoken about struggling with alcohol during that time, saying he “was always a drinker,” but that it “became a bad problem” once he felt blackballed by Hollywood.

“I lost the house, lost the cars, lost everything,” he said.

He said his wife eventually gave him an ultimatum that changed his path.

“She grabbed me and says, ‘It’s us or the bottle, you choose,'” McDonough recalled. “And I never looked back.”

McDonough and Ruvé have been married for nearly 23 years, having met in 2000 while he was filming “Band of Brothers” and marrying on Dec. 1, 2003. They share five children and have produced several projects together, including “Boon,” “The Warrant: Breaker’s Law,” “Homestead” and “The Last Rodeo.”