'Sons of Anarchy' Wanted to Recast Taylor Sheridan Before He Quit Over Money
Taylor Sheridan dropped some major bombshells about his decision to quit Sons of Anarchy because of how little they were paying him.
"The worst beating [I've taken in the industry] is also the greatest gift that I ever got. Season 2 of Sons of Anarchy had ended and it's a very successful cable show. I'm an actor on this show making scale," Sheridan, 56, who played David Hale, recalled on the Tuesday, June 30, episode of "The Howard Stern Show" podcast. "There's two dudes on the DVD - one is Charlie Hunnam who was the star and who's a great guy - and [the other was] me."
Despite being front and center on the show, Sheridan didn't feel that way off screen.
"We're it and I literally would leave the set of that show and go to my other job because I didn't make enough on that show to pay my rent and live," he recalled. "So after season 2, I told them, I said, ‘Guys, I'm not coming back and doing this again for this price. I'm just not doing it. I want what the other 14 people - not even asking for what Charlie gets or Katey [Sagal] or Ron [Perlman]. I just want what the other 11 guys are getting.'"
Sheridan's request was denied.
"They couldn't do it. What the other guys were getting by the way on a 13-episode show is $20,000 an episode," he claimed. "It's before taxes, before agents, before everything. We're not talking about an exorbitant amount of money."
The actor-turned-producer was offered $15,000, which he couldn't accept, adding, "They said, ‘We'll give you 15 and we'll guarantee you 10 episodes. That's all you're getting.' And I do the math on it and I'm and I said, ‘That's not a raise. What is that?' I said, ‘No.' And my attorney responded to their business affairs guy saying, ‘Look, I've got kids on f**king cooking shows on YouTube that make more than that.' And they go, ‘Well, then the guy should go get a cooking show on YouTube. We just don't have to pay him because there's 50 of that dude. I can recast that guy tomorrow.'"
Sheridan credited that as the moment he decided to pivot.
"I realized my value is I'm imminently replaceable and that my business did not respect me and I thought to myself that I can't take this job and tell my son, ‘Son, you can be anything you want to be, but I'm going to miss your soccer game because I've got a Windex audition,'" he continued. "So, I quit the show. I told them, ‘Whether you want to call it pride or ego or integrity, I don't know what you call it, but I just realized I've maxed out what I can do as an actor in this industry. So I'm not going to try to do it anymore and the people that have all the power are the people telling stories so I'm going to tell my own stories.' That's when I decided that I was going to write."
Sheridan originally got his start as an actor before writing scripts for movies - and then transitioning to TV with works such as Yellowstone, Landman and more. The prolific producer hasn't been shy, however, about the challenges he faced on the road to success.
"In 2010, I was on a show and thank God that they had so little respect for me that they offered me garbage," Sheridan shared on the Monday, June 29, episode of "The Bill Simmons Podcast" show. "They made it really easy to walk away because it was easy for me to sit there and say, ‘OK, I'm going to do this for the next six or seven years and I'm still going to have a second job with this junk they're paying me and I'm going to miss my chance to be a creator, a chance to tell a story.'"
He added: "If they hadn't treated me so disrespectfully … they hit me over the head with a mallet that made it so clear that the only way I was going to get to be an effective storyteller was if I told my own stories. I was never going to get the opportunity as an actor."
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This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 8:16 AM.