NEW YORK, May 23 (UPI) — Neal McDonough says his new family drama, The Last Rodeo, reunited some of his favorite people from the iconic TV series, Justified.
Directed by Jon Avnet and in theaters Friday, the film follows widower and retired professional bull-riding star Joe Wainwright (McDonough) as he returns to the ring to compete for the money to save his beloved grandson Cody (Graham Harvey) from the same type of brain cancer that killed his beloved wife Rose (Ruve McDonough).
Helping him get back in the game — over the objections of his worried daughter Sally (Sarah Jones) — are Joe’s estranged friends Charlie (Mykelti Williamson) and Jimmy Mack (Christopher McDonald).
“The guy who cut my arm off [in Justified] happens to be now my best friend in this movie,” McDonough, 59, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“How does that happen? Because Mykelti Williamson, in real life, is one of my best, dearest friends on the planet. I love him. What a great actor! He’s a thief. He stole every scene he was in with me. It was awful,” McDonough laughed.
Avnet said his relationship with McDonough and Williamson dates back more than 20 years to the crime drama, Boomtown.
“That’s when I cast Neal with [Justified writer-producer] Graham Yost and Mykelti and they got to know each other, so when we got to work together all on Justified, it was a reunion, and it gave us an economy of words and the ability to explore things,” the filmmaker said. “These are real pros and they’re just great.”
Even Jones guest starred on Justified in 2011.
The only main cast member who didn’t have some connection to the show was McDonald, but McDonough said he was quickly embraced by The Last Rodeo family.
“He showed up swinging for the fences,” McDonough recalled.
“He walks in a situation, which he’s never worked with Jon before and there’s me and Mykelti in our own shorthand and then Jon and I have our own shorthand, and here he comes into this like, ‘How do I fit into this party?’ And you know what he did? He manned up and he crushed it. Chris McDonald is a beast.”
Avnet agreed.
“He wants to make sure he knows the character,” Avnet explained.
“It’s not like they walk in and they’re fearless. They care and they worry and they work to overcome that because they want to be worthy of the characters, worthy of the friendship, worthy of the respect,” Avnet said of his cast.
McDonough wrote the film with Avnet and Derek Presley after he was away on a film shoot, missing his wife Ruve and wondering how he would survive if anything happened to the mother of his five children.
“This idea from above came into my head — write a film about Rocky on a bull, about a grandfather that has to save his grandson because he’s dying of the same brain tumor that his wife died of,” said McDonough, who is a devout Catholic.
“I’m a pretty smart guy, but I didn’t come up with that myself and, within a week, we had the first draft, within another week, Ruve helped me raise the financing and the distribution through the amazing Angel Studios,” he added.
“They said, ‘Who do you want to direct it?’ And I said, ‘There’s only one choice for me — the greatest director I’ve ever worked with, a guy who has been a mentor to me, but, also, like a big brother to me for all these years, and that’s Jon Avnet.'”
Catch these two powerhouse actors in The Last Rodeo – a story about family, brotherhood, and rodeo!
In theaters May 23! Get your tickets now at https://t.co/UPH0yhF2D0 ️ pic.twitter.com/qUrfo6603h— The Last Rodeo Movie (@lastrodeomovie) May 22, 2025
Avnet — whose credits include Risky Business, Less Than Zero, The Three Musketeers and Fried Green Tomatoes — said the aspect of the story that most intrigued him was the loving, but tense relationship between Joe and his daughter.
“I’ve got two daughters, two older sisters, my wife has two sisters, there are three women in her family, and [I know] dads don’t do the greatest job often communicating with their daughters,” Avnet noted.
“It’s hard to figure out how to fix that. So, that interested me very much, and I thought it’s really universal message of the whole film.”
Avnet also wanted to take a closer look at the friendship with Charlie that Joe abandoned when he sinks into his grief over Rose’s death and why Charlie forgives Joe after their long estrangement.
“He’s become a kind of narcissistic, self-involved character that really has gone inside and he’s hurt so many people who love them and the sad circumstances that forces him to ride also gives him the opportunity to, perhaps, mend the friendship with Charlie and, perhaps, have a second shot with his daughter,” Avnet said.
The filmmaker also was happy to see his longtime friend — who is frequently cast as villains on shows like Justified, Tulsa King and Yellowstone — finally get to play the hero.
“I believed he could be something he hasn’t been in films before — the leading man in the mold of Clint Eastwood or John Wayne or Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart,” Avnet said.
“I believed if i did my job well, the audience would see him the same way and because he has that gravitas and, what people don’t know about him unless they’re close friends with him, is he is so emotionally accessible. He’s just there and I knew he could bring that out in this character in film.”
Avnet offers as an example an emotional scene in which thousands of people stand and pray for Joe’s family when he walks into the bull-riding ring.
“It’s so moving and Neal says nothing,” Avnet said. “You just see on his face this private guy, this tormented guy, this guy who never knew how to mourn the loss of his wife, standing there and seeing these strangers sending their prayers and love.”
But McDonough credited Avnet for polishing the script he handed off to him and weaving the whole story together through his thoughtful direction.
“He pulled so many amazing things out of the actors and their performances and there’s a trust that we have with Jon because he protects the actors,” McDonough said.
“More than anything, he wants the actors to have complete comfort on a set and the ability to do something different and to try things and to build characters and build moments.”
McDonough said he doesn’t generally play heroes because he refuses to do intimate scenes with anyone but his spouse.
Luckily for him, Ruve played his late wife Rose in flashback scenes, so McDonough finally gets to kiss the girl on screen.
“I’m famous for one or two takes [filming a scene], but I think I got to 13 takes that day before my daughter London got so disgusted, saying, ‘Dad, that’s enough.’ So, I had fun. This is my moment,” he said. “I’m the most blessed dude that I know.”
