Kevin Costner reveals 'tragic' truths uncovered in new docu-series 'The West'

Fox News

26-05-2025

Kevin Costner is bringing love for Western culture to a younger generation, thanks to so many of his cowboy-themed projects: "Yellowstone," "Horizon" and now the History Channel's "The West."
Costner is narrating the eight-part series and serves as an executive producer. During an interview with Fox News Digital, the star explained that he was shocked during the filming process to find everything very "tragic" and without happy endings.
"Everything I found, almost everything I found was tragic. Isn't that weird? Every story -- there weren't a lot of happy endings, although there were people that made it on the backs of these kind of people were … zeroing in on," he explained.
Costner shared an example of John Colter, who has been widely referred to as the first "mountain man."
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"Colter was especially interesting to me as a man who was perfectly fit being out there. The guys that came along, artists came, scientists came. It was an expedition, but Colter would hunt for the meat, would sign language.
"John Colter was a mountain man. He had no business wanting to go back to Washington and I felt that, we're gonna give him one, not let him go back. Then he became so responsible for some of the greatest, wildest stories ever," Costner explained.
"Everything I found, almost everything I found was tragic."
The History Channel show "provides a fresh look at the epic history of the American West by delving into the desperate struggle for the land itself and how it still shapes the America we know today," the website states.
During production, Costner said that he learned a lot about American history and how settlers took over the native homeland and forced their ideas onto them.
"I know I learned things, I was thinking about these missionaries who went back and had to talk people into funding them to let them go, and then they tried to bring their religion to these poor people," he began.
"As we moved across the country, we told them all different stories, and we talked about that too, like, we don't want your land, we just want to move through it. Now we want your land, and we want you to cut your hair. We want to change your religion. And we confuse people. And when we couldn't convince them, we murdered them, and we made up convenient stories to do it. These places don't have their names anymore. We named them after ourselves," Costner explained.
The "Yellowstone" star was joined by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who also serves as an executive producer on "The West," during his interview with Fox News Digital.
Goodwin told Fox News Digital she knew Costner would be perfect for this role due to his spiritual connection to the West and his enthusiasm is "contagious" when around him.
Costner told Fox News Digital he is a big fan of sports and compares the certainty of playing sports to the history of the West.
"I've always felt that I like sports, OK? I'm a sports guy. You and I know the score, right? There's nobody can bulls--- us about who won. There's something honest about the sports page. It's not dishonest. We find out who won, right? The rest of our news is a little bit nebulous, but sports never is.
"And when we think about the West, if we think about it really honestly, we say it was a dangerous place. All the time, you had to be really resourceful. I know guys that kind of really want to see the truth. Let me see how raw it was. Let me how real it was. Am I that tough?" Costner wondered.
Costner said living in the West was difficult, and history shows many people were forced to live there without the wherewithal to do so.
"They went in groups, and they sometimes perished as groups, and their humanity was alive. And their worst tendencies came out, and their best tendencies came out," he said.
Costner's "The West" premieres on the History Channel Memorial Day and is available for streaming May 27.