Juan Pablo Raba, Marc Menchaca, and the team behind Paramount+’s ‘Dutton Ranch’recently chatted about the latest entry in the long-running Yellowstone franchise.
Lauren Smith/Paramount+
In Dutton Ranch, the fifth series in Taylor Sheridan’s expanding Yellowstone universe and the first to follow Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler past Montana, Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser reprise their roles as a couple gambling everything on a new life in South Texas. They walk into a rival empire run by Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), her family fixer Joaquin (Raba), and her volatile son Rob-Will (Jai Courtney). On the Dutton side is Zachariah Moss (Menchaca), a cowboy fresh out of prison trying to outrun his past. The Knockturnal sat down with Raba and Menchaca during the series’ New York press day at The Plaza Hotel to discuss what they pulled from their own lives to build characters this layered — and the silence men are still taught to carry.
Raba, who hosts a men’s mental health podcast in addition to his on-screen work, was direct about the cultural inheritance. “We’ve been kind of force-fed into what we are supposed to be and supposed to behave,” Raba said. “Most of that information is not true.”
When I asked what it actually costs men when they don’t speak up, Menchaca answered without hesitation: “True and genuine relationships.”
Lauren Smith/Paramount+
Raba built on it. “We become like a pressure cooker. We just start swallowing, swallowing everything,” Raba said. “At some point it’s going to burst.”
He closed on the line that reframed the entire conversation. “They teach us we can’t be vulnerable — but that’s such a paradox, because we are all vulnerable since the moment we are born,” Raba said. “By showing those feelings, we are not being vulnerable. We are showing how strong we can actually be.”
Dutton Ranch is streaming now on Paramount+.
