The star tells ET he's 'absolutely' open to joining his pal, Kevin Costner, on Paramount+'s 'Yellowstone.'
Sylvester Stallone is getting a taste of the gangster life in Paramount+'s upcoming crime drama, Tulsa King.
The series follows New York mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Stallone), just after he is released from prison after 25 years and unceremoniously exiled by his boss to set up shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Realizing that his mob family may not have his best interests in mind, Dwight slowly builds a “crew” from a group of unlikely characters, to help him establish a new criminal empire in a place that to him might as well be another planet. Dana Delany was also added to the cast on Monday in an announcement tied to Paramount+'s official launch in the U.K. on Wednesday.
"I’ve always wanted to play a gangster since... I basically started off my career mugging everyone... but it never happened. I have my thoughts on why but better late than never," Stallone told ET's Cassie DiLaura at the Londoner Hotel for Paramount+'s U.K. launch event. "Taylor Sheridan wrote an idea, a screenplay that was really good and Terence Winter, who wrote Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, they put it all together and what you have is East meets West."
"[My character, Dwight,] comes out of prison after 25 years, expects to be rewarded for keeping his mouth shut and he's betrayed," he continued, adding that when Dwight gets his next assignment -- to run Tulsa -- "it’s a different world, different kind of people and he starts to become indoctrinated into the Western sort of life. So it's a combination of the two. It’s a dark comedy but also it can get rough."
Stallone shared how he first became connected to Sheridan, who also oversees the Yellowstone universe for Paramount+, years and years ago.
"My daughters and I were practicing -- I play polo a lot; a long time ago people would say, how can you afford it? I played with the worst horse on the planet, but I learned and eventually after I made money, I started to go into... barrel racing. It's very, very delicate and I brought my daughters into it and Taylor Sheridan was at the same barn and he hadn’t made it yet," he said. "He still acting and I think he was still doing [2015's] Sicario, just on the cusp, and I thought, 'You know what, I’m going to do another Rambo, you want to write it?'"
"He goes, 'No, I’m kind of busy on my own thing,' and then we got into a conversation. He ended up buying my daughter’s horse and then he bought a second one... but they are the earliest inception of his transition into being this megastar," Stallone said.
Stallone didn't shut the door on the possibility of appearing on Sheridan's other Paramount+ projects, like Yellowstone.
"Absolutely," he said, noting that he and star Kevin Costner have known each other "for centuries." "He's finally run into a guy who’s like, 'I’d just like to have a retirement home. Do you mind if I buy your entire ranch? I got an offer you can’t refuse.' ... That'd be great. Good man."
As for what Stallone hopes viewers take away when they tune in to Tulsa King, it'll be a chance for them to see him in another light.
"You’re probably going to see, for better or worse, who I am," he said, adding that doing television is like being on "a bullet train." "A lot of actors go into, who should I morph into? I think if you just say what happens -- what would it be like if Sylvester Stallone... just became a gangster? The personality is mine; I’m a gangster but I don’t change the way I talk... You have your personality like the way you are right now.... You never see it coming. You don’t automatically become the stereotype gangster. That’s too obvious. You just be yourself."
Tulsa King premieres with back-to-back episodes Sunday, Nov. 13 on Paramount+.
ET and Paramount+ are both subsidiaries of Paramount Global.
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