Although he’s most known these days for his work on the great Western TV show Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan wrote a handful of movies and his very best had to be saved by him fighting with producers. Sheridan wrote 2015’s Sicario, which is considered one of the best and most tense movies of the 2010s.

The crime thriller follows an FBI agent who joins a government task force in an attempt to take down a Mexican drug cartel. Things end up being way more corrupt and intense than the FBI agent expected, setting Sicario as a realistic and intense watch.

The fact that the movie is told with this FBI agent at the center of it all helps to ground it and put the viewer in their shoes. That’s exactly why it was so important for Taylor Sheridan to fight to keep his protagonist exactly the way he wanted.

Producers Wanted Taylor Sheridan To Make Changes To Emily Blunt’s Kate

They Wanted The Lead Character To Be Male

According to director Denis Villeneuve, the producers behind Sicario wanted the lead character to be male (via Slash Film). Villeneuve said, “People were afraid that the lead part was a female character, and I know several times [Taylor Sheridan] had been asked to rewrite the role.” Sheridan’s response to these requests was strong:

Very early on I took a meeting with a producer who asked if I would change the role to male so a specific actor could play it. I used a couple of strong adjectives in my reply and haven’t spoken to him since.

It’s likely that Sheridan fought so hard to keep Kate as his protagonist because he based the character on a real person. She was someone who wasn’t physically big but was intelligent, capable, and a hard worker. While you could certainly get a male actor who fits the bill, Sheridan fought to keep his initial vision for the character intact.

Taylor Sheridan Was Right To Keep Kate The Way She Was

Emily Blunt Delivered A Fantastic Performance

There are certainly plenty of reasons why Sicario is a great film, but a major one is Kate Mercer. The character, as Taylor Sheridan wrote her initially, is perfect for her spot in the movie. It’s because of who she is that we really gauge how dangerous the situation is and how questionable the acts of the task force are.

Just having a male character out there, no matter how talented the actor was, who Sheridan didn’t initially envision, could’ve caused problems. He might not have been as layered or as fully fleshed out. Sheridan even added:

I didn’t want it to be just this do-gooder guy. I wanted it to be someone that had sacrificed a tremendous amount to achieve her position of respect and authority, and I wanted to see the consequences on her face.

There’s also the fact that Emily Blunt was phenomenal as Kate Mercer. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the lead character of Sicario because of how good she was in it. Sheridan made the right call to keep the character his way, and now that he’s more established, he shouldn’t have to fight anyone to do so again.

Sicario 2 Missed Emily Blunt’s Character

The Sequel Needed Kate

The 2018 sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, was a solid movie on its own but it failed to recapture what made the original special. While there were several reasons for that, a big one was that the film missed Kate. Blunt was iniтιтally set to return but after a few months, she was no longer attached to the project.

Without her, the film shifted the narrative focus to Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro. That’s an interesting route to go given how complex his character is and how he operates in areas of grey. However, Kate was the heart of the first film and she was a stand-in for the audience.

As noted, having the story play out through Kate’s eyes allowed the audience to understand how twisted Alejandro and Matt (Josh Brolin) were doing things. Not having Kate in the sequel meant that the film missed that, so while it was still good, it wasn’t anywhere near the level of quality of the first Sicario.

Taylor Sheridan Fought Against Another Big Sicario Change

He Had To Keep The Ending How He Wanted

The amount of push and pull between Taylor Sheridan and the producers of Sicario is evident and that included a battle over how the film would end. Sheridan detailed that the producers wanted Alejandro to be less ruthless when he visits Fausto’s family in the conclusion. He said:

It was a different violence. In the original, what Alejandro did was simply torture Fausto Alarcon in front of his family. Then, essentially, he told the wife to take the children far away. Raise them to be doctors or lawyers and not drug dealers so he doesn’t have to come back and kill them.

In fact, both versions of the final scene ended up getting filmed. The one we ultimately got where Alejandro kills Fausto’s family and then him, and the version where he lets the family go. According to Sheridan, they showed both versions to test audiences and interestingly, the more brutal one tested better.

Like Kate’s character remaining a female, this was a case where Sheridan’s initial plan turned out to be the better one. Given his success over the past decade, it’s unlikely that Sheridan will have to fight to keep his ideas in any future project the way he had to with Sicario.