Season 5 of Yellowstone won’t be the last fans see of the Dutton family.
“It’s not the last season,” actor Cole Hauser, 47, tells PEOPLE at the Yellowstone premiere in New York City Thursday — during which an executive confirmed that co-creator Taylor Sheridan was not in attendance because he was busy writing the next season of the hit show.
Cast members Luke Grimes, Wes Bentley, Kelsey Asbille and Gil Birmingham also attended the celebration for the show’s latest installment at the Walter Reade Theater, during which Hauser revealed that in preparation for the new season — returning Nov. 13 on the Paramount Network — Sheridan had actors hit a “cowboy boot camp.”
“He’s taught me disciplines in cutting and roping and reining,” Hauser says. “It’s been more of the same every year we go to, basically a cowboy boot camp. And so he’s very certain that he wants to make sure that all of us can do what we did. This year, which is really cool, is that a lot of the actors are doing a lot of their own stunts, so Phil kind of took the shackles off and let us go this year.”
The latest season of the show, which CBS had called the “most-watched scripted series in all of television” in 2021, will pick up where the Montana crew left off in season 4.
A trailer released late October shows that John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, will be sworn in as the state’s new governor; and his daughter, Beth Dutton, played by Kelly Reilly, appointed his chief of staff.
As for his character of Rip Wheeler this season, Hauser explains to PEOPLE that the dynamic between Rip and Beth doesn’t change too drastically.
“Taylor was great in not changing our relationship too much. I’m still there for you know, there’s a lot that dives into the past and seeing like their earlier part of our lives, with the younger actors that are fantastic, but Rip is continuously the rock that he’s always been for her,” he tells PEOPLE.
Hauser also calls the characters “imperfect people,” and admits that he’s not sure why audiences gravitate toward them — just that they do.