The Enforcer
Cole Ha looks like he can kick your ass. And kicking ass is the specialty of his most famous character, Rip Wheeler from the hit series “Yellowstone.” He’s the show’s man in black, his dark cowboy hat often coated in trail dust, shades hiding his intense eyes, black beard covering a mouth that seldom smiles. The absolute opposite of a pretty boy, he’s never chatty—and when he does talk it’s often with a bit of menace in his voice. He’s not the kind of guy to take a back seat to anything.
“Yellowstone” is a modern-day Western and the most popular scripted series on television. It debuted in 2018 on Paramount, an unlikely network to spawn a hit, but quickly garnered an audience that now enjoys a viewership just shy of 10 million per episode. Even its reruns, broadcast on CBS, draw millions of viewers, more than some new shows. In 2022, more than 12 million watched its season five premiere. They still await its conclusion. With long delays from a writers’ strike and disagreements between the series creator and its biggest star, Kevin Costner, the season was split in two. After more than a year of waiting, “Yellowstone” will finally return on November 10 with its final six episodes.
The enthralling story of the American West centers around a vast Montana cattle ranch dating back to the late 1800s. Its owner is a man willing to do virtually anything to protect his land and his family from outsiders. The scenery is beautiful, majestic, and the protagonists are modern-day cowboys who work hard and play hard. They ride horses, carry guns and get into one fight after another to defend their ways.
Ha plays the enforcer on the show, a tough guy among tough guys. He’s the right-hand man to ranch owner John Dutton, played memorably by Academy Award winner Costner. Rip is the No. 2 every boss dreams of: he’s absolutely loyal, needs barely any supervision and his decisions are rarely wrong. He’s also the guy you want in your corner when things do go wrong, and in “Yellowstone” things quite often go wrong. The show earns its nickname: “The Sopranos” in Montana.
When a group of bikers initiate a scrap with the Dutton Ranch workers, Rip speeds onto the scene in his oversized pickup, crushing the invaders’ row of choppers with his truck. He jumps into the melee carrying a branding iron, which he swings to great effect. Soon, the once-formidable gang is crawling on the ground in pain. He finds the leader and picks him up, staring into his eyes with a crystal-clear message. “You leave now,” he says simply, “or you never leave.”
When trouble brews at the local diner, he rips an armed robber out through the window and beats him into submission. When his girlfriend is savagely attacked by two men with guns, he comes to the rescue. A bullet to his gut doesn’t slow him down as he strides into action, taking the gun from his attacker, using it to shoot the other. He dispatches the first man with his bare hands.
Rip also has a soft side, particularly for firecracker Beth Dutton. Played by Kelly Reilly, the boss’ daughter is the love of his life. Their wedding is impromptu, a small ceremony held on the ranch, but the surroundings are more striking and beautiful than the grandest cathedral, the snow-capped Bitterroot Mountains serving as silent witness to their vows. Rip, his smile wide and white, surprises Beth with a modest piece of jewelry that he slides onto her finger. “It was my mother’s ring,” he says, a wisp of gravel in his voice. “We didn’t have much, Beth. We were poor. But it’s yours.” He looks her in the eyes. “And so am I.”
That’s Rip in a nutshell. Sometimes he’s making hearts swoon, other times he’s making them stop.
Off camera, Ha emanates considerably less menace than his character. He smiles often, a 49-year-old who can for a few years younger, his face still unlined, his hair and beard devoid of gray. He’s relaxed, wearing a trucker’s hat and a denim shirt, sitting in his Montana home, not far from where “Yellowstone” is shooting. (He also has a home in Florida.) On the wall behind him, a few cowboy hats hang on pegs. He has a big, steaming cup of black coffee in his hand, a toothpick in his mouth. So, he’s asked: What’s the appeal of Rip? Why do people love this character?
“I think the simple answer is you don’t get to see real American men this way anymore,” he says. “He’s honest, he’s loyal, as insane as he can be at times, he has a great heart. The simplicity of life, the understanding of nature. I can go on and on.” He pauses. “He still has a flip phone,” he says with a chuckle. “He doesn’t know how to text.”
The “Yellowstone” phenomenon took many by surprise. “It was a grassroots show that really caught fire in middle America then grew out to the edges of the country, whether it’s New York, California, what have you,” says Ha. “There’s a real core audience for it. It was new, it was different.” The show is far from woke. Problems are typically solved with fists and guns, and sometimes friends and family fight with as much fury as strangers. There’s a reason people tune in: Who wouldn’t want to ride a horse like the wind, sip whiskey as the sun sets over the mountains in the distance and serve up a roundhouse to the loudmouth in the bar who insulted your girl? The uncredited star of the show is the state of Montana. Every episode features grand, sweeping vistas of Big Sky Country: open stretches of ranchland, stunning mountains, vast inviting spaces. “It explores this beautiful place called Montana,” says Ha. “The great thing about television or film is you want to take people out of wherever they are and put them in another place and go along for the journey. And Taylor is, in my opinion, the best American writer right now, certainly in this space.”
Taylor is Taylor Sheridan, a real cowboy who wrote and created the show. Sheridan owns ranches—the Four Sixes Texas ranch seen in some episodes of “Yellowstone” is his, as are most of the horses used on the program. “I just make movies to my horse habit,” he joked on “CBS Sunday Morning.” The actor turned writer wrote Sicario and several other film scripts and is also the creator of the Sylvester Stallone series “Tulsa King,” which also airs on Paramount. Sheridan originally planned “Yellowstone” as a movie before pitching it for TV. He had a deal with HBO, which eventually fell through, and after taking it back to market it ended up with Paramount.
The Western, once the most popular genre in America, had largely fallen out of favor by the time of “Yellowstone.” If you think of old Westerns on TV, you a lot of cliché and questionable authenticity. Sheridan has strived to make “Yellowstone” as real as can be, and a big part of that is how actors like Ha work on horseback. “Taylor was really good early with me, putting me on every horse, every saddle, making me as uncomfortable as I could be,” says Ha. “It fast-tracked me to be a better horseman. It’s really about saddle time. You have to put in the work.”
Horses are hardly new to Ha, who was born on a ranch called Laurel Springs, located high in the Santa Ynez Mountains overlooking Santa Barbara, California. His father delivered him. “He was the first person who touched me,” says Ha. “It’s a horse ranch, like a dude ranch. On a clear day you can see 50 miles. It’s a stunning ranch.”
Ha is descended from Hollywood royalty. His great-grandfather was Harry Warner, a founder of Warner Bros., and his mother Cass Warner founded Warner Sisters film production company. His father is the actor Wings Ha, his grandfathers were screenwriters. But he didn’t know his family story until he was nearly a teen. “My mom was kind of the black sheep of the family. She moved away really early, went up to Berkeley, started her life.” She and Wings married in 1974, had Cole in 1975, then divorced in 1977. “They fell in love, and then she moved around a lot. And I moved with her. I was [at the ranch] until four, then I moved to Oregon, then Florida, Alabama for a bit with my uncle, then we moved back to California.”
Ha was an athletic kid, who played semi-pro soccer in his youth before getting burned out and turning to acting. “When I started really taking acting seriously [my mother] started enlightening me to who my family was, who my father was,” he says. He was 17 when he made his screen debut in School Ties with Brendan Fraser and Matt Damon. While he’s been in plenty of hits, you might not recognize him. He dyed his hair black (he’s actually a redhead) and added some weight for “Yellowstone.” Ha portrayed a paddle-wielding bully in Dazed and Confused (which starred Matthew McConaughey), hazing a group of incoming high-school freshmen. He played one of the loyal working-class pals in Good Will Hunting, ing Ben Affleck to present their brainy buddy (played by Damon) with a car that’s several parts Bondo and even more parts love. He died in dramatic fashion in Olympus Has Fallen, playing a Secret Service agent trying to defend the White House with star Gerard Butler. Outgunned and outmanned, Ha succumbs to a hail of gunfire after he utters the titular line again and again.
Ha says his early years—spent without his father while he moved around so often—were difficult in some ways, but prepared him for his professional life. “I not liking it much. I went to 11 different schools in five years. I didn’t like it but I think you get used to it, like anything. And what it prepared me for is to be able to get along in any place, anywhere. And I think with my job, the more comfortable you are, wherever you are, the better off you are.”
Ha spent a lot of time with his grandfather when he was young, and that exposed him to cigars. “My grandfather was a huge cigar aficionado,” he says. “He smoked H. Upmanns. He smoked them since he was 30-something years old.” But the cigar wasn’t as popular with grandma, who would yell at him. “He smoked them day and night. I think she got sick of the smell of it. She cut him off. My grandfather was like, ‘well, hold on a second. Fine I won’t smoke it. But can I at least have it in my mouth?’ ”
They reached a deal: Grandpa would chew cigars, not light them up. But he took chewing to the extreme. “By the end of the day it would be down to a little stub. I would say ‘grandpa, where are you spitting that out?’ And he’d say, ‘I’m not.’” Ha laughs at the memory. “He used to chew ’em and swallow it. He was just one of those iron-stomached, bad-assed, old-school guys.”
Ha doesn’t eat cigars, but he certainly enjoys them. He mixes it up between H. Upmanns (like his grandad), Arturo Fuente Hemingways and a new favorite made by a friend called Bongani, which are rolled in Africa using African tobaccos. He describes himself as an occasional cigar smoker.
Ha really discovered the difference between a great cigar and an ordinary one in the late 1990s when he went to Cuba. He was in his early 20s and ended up at El Laguito, the cigar factory where Cohibas were born. “I think that’s really where I found, OK, there’s a difference,” he says.
But the actor wasn’t in Cuba just to puff away—he was actually on a mission to rescue a friend.
“I was looking for a friend of mine who had disappeared down there. I can’t really tell you who it is—I went down there ’cause his mom was worried for him. I stayed in a bunch of places.” Back in those days, the only way to fly to Cuba from the United States was via a different country. He flew via Jamaica, and asked Cuban customs to not mark his port. “The guy is looking at me, and I’m like, do you mind not stamping that? I didn’t want, at the time, to come back to America and some customs guy going what were you doing in Cuba?”
On his visit, Ha spent time at the Nacional, Veradero Beach, met local Cubans, went to music clubs and fell in love with the country while he tried to find his friend.
“It took me nine days to find him. It ended well,” he says. “When he initially saw me he thought he saw a ghost. He couldn’t believe I was there. At the time, he needed someone to bring him back to reality, to present day. And that’s what I did. I got him out of there. He’s doing better now.”
In addition to finding his runaway pal, Ha discovered a love for Cuba. “I had such a cool experience. I think America is the greatest country in the world. But what I saw down there was real happiness. A culture that was really repressed because of Castro. Being watched. But when they had fun, they smiled. There was a real energy that came off. I was like wow, how poor these people are, how little they have but how happy they are. Pretty amazing to see that kind of happiness. I was blown away.”
Ha yearns to return to Cuba. “I want to go back, and I’ve talked to my two sons. I want to take them there. And we live so close to Cuba. It’s definitely in the plans. I adore the Dominican [Republic], I’ve been all over that area. There’s something special down there. The people are vibrant, full of life.”
“Yellowstone” has kept Ha fairly busy over the past seven years, but the recent downtime has given him time for a few side ventures. He’s actively involved in charity, on the board of Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which helps family of deceased special operations personnel, as well as family of any service awarded the Medal of Honor. A coffee fan, he is a partner in Free Rein Coffee Co., which also benefits veterans. His Bourbon brand, Lazy K Bar Whiskey, is distilled in Kentucky, but bottled in Montana, where it launched last year. It recently expanded outside of the state.
The long break from the show meant more time with his wife and three children. “My kids, they all play sports. We’ll go to hockey games, football games, anything that has a ball.”
Ha has truly enjoyed the “Yellowstone” ride. “I have the greatest office in the world,” he says, describing the area outside his home, near Darby, Montana. “I’ve been saying that for seven years. I get to go out in nature, ride a horse, chase cows, cut rope, rein at times . . . it’s a very special role. At the same time too, I kind of kick myself, remind myself, this is about as good as it gets.”
The only bad thing he can name about his newfound fame is the unique reaction he sometimes gets from older, female fans. “Old ladies coming up and pinching my ass,” he says with a laugh. “You gotta be careful of the older ones, they don’t care anymore.”
As the series draws to a conclusion, the Yellowstone Ranch is in trouble. The midseason finale of season five left many questions unanswered. Disease was threatening the herd, so the family has been forced to go into debt and lease land in the Texas panhandle, with Rip leading a team on the long trip south to Texas. John Dutton has become governor of Montana and is facing an impeachment movement introduced by his son Jaime, who is threatening to spill the family’s dirty secrets to the world. The future of the ranch seems in greater peril than at any other time in the series.
While “Yellowstone” formally ends in December, with the wrap-up of season five, the story isn’t done. Paramount has confirmed there will be a sequel. (Sheridan has already made and released two prequels to the tale, “1883” and “1923,” the latter starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.) While Costner has said he won’t be coming back, there’s talk of other cast continuing the story, including Ha. Rumors have attached Matthew McConaughey to the future project.
Much like his loyal character, Ha is tight-lipped about the future of Rip Wheeler, and won’t share any secrets. “I don’t make the decisions brother—I’m a hired gun,” he says. “Would I like a spinoff? Yeah. It’s been a pleasure working with this cast, with Taylor Sheridan—why would we stop a good thing? Yeah, pen it and let’s do it.”
