Sylvester Stallone talks playing a mob boss in ‘Tulsa King’, living a purposeful life and never quitting

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After nearly 50 years, Sylvester Stallone has finally landed his dream role playing a mob boss in Paramount+’s Tulsa King.

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“It’s taken a while,” Stallone, 76, says with a dry laugh during an interview in a downtown Toronto hotel. “I’ve been wanting to do it since I saw The Godfather — even prior to The Godfather.”

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Long before he became a household name playing Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, the multi-hyphenate actor-writer-director tried to jumpstart his career as an extra in the famous Godfather wedding scene. He was turned down for not looking Italian enough.

“So finally, it’s come to fruition,” he says of his starring role in the 10-part series debuting on Paramount+ Nov. 13. “It feels good.”

Created by Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown) and Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire), the new crime drama casts Stallone as Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a mafioso who is released from prison after 25 years and promptly jettisoned to Oklahoma to build a new criminal empire in the sleepy Midwestern city.

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“What makes this unique for me is it’s a different take on this particular genre,” Stallone tells the Sun. “He’s not walking around with those typical gangster gestures. There’s a sarcastic humour to it.”

Originally, the role as it was conceived had Stallone playing a violent tough guy.

“He would just walk up and hit someone in the head with a bottle. I said, ‘This is not right.’ I think he walks up and he makes you lower your guard because he’s so charming — and his name is Dwight,” Stallone says as his lips curl into a smile. “There isn’t an Italian in the world named Dwight. Why is he named Dwight? Because he’s named after Eisenhower — Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. A five-star general who’s an organizer and a leader, not a thug.”

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I think you always have something to prove. People say to me, ‘You have nothing left to prove,’ and those are just words. In your insecure brain there’s always that notion that (makes you wonder), can you still do it?

At 76, Sylvester Stallone says he feels he still has something to prove

Since beginning a career that dates back to the early ’70s, when he started out as a background actor before landing his breakthrough role in Rocky in 1976, Stallone has appeared in more than 50 films in his career and is one of the only actors to feature in movies that have opened at the top of the box office in six different decades.

But in addition to playing a mobster, Tulsa King also marks Stallone’s first foray into television as an actor — a streak he’ll continue in an upcoming reality show that will chronicle his home life with his daughters — Sophia, 26, Sistine, 24 and Scarlet, 20 — and wife Jennifer Flavin, from whom he briefly split earlier this year.

“If you want to do your dream project, it has a better chance on streaming than it does as a feature (film),” he says.

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More than 20 years after he filmed the racing drama Driven in Toronto, Stallone spoke more about mining his own experiences in Hollywood to play an exiled crime lord, revealed the hardest movie he’s ever made and told us the one thing that will make him retire.

Dwight Manfredi is a character we haven’t seen you play before. He’s a completely fresh and new addition to your acting resume. What first hooked you about him?

“It’s hard to find anything that’s different nowadays. Everything is derivative. But here they took a little of this and mixed it with that. They took a fella who is a classic gangster, and they gave him a reason to be an underdog. He’s been in jail for 25 years for something he didn’t really do and now, when he’s supposed to be rewarded for keeping his mouth shut, they betray him and send him out West, which is basically saying: ‘You’re banished. You’re done.’ From there, he proceeds to build a whole new life with the strangest group of characters you’ve ever seen. And therein lies the message of how you have to be ready for what life throws at you to try and turn it around into something positive.”

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Thinking about your own career, did you relate to Dwight’s reinvention of himself?

“Oh yeah. I didn’t have to dig too deep for this. There are a few films I’ve done that have been pretty biographical, and this has a lot of aspects of that. Rocky Balboa was very biographical. There are certain emotional scenes in here that I think will surprise some people. I’m drawing from situations that I’ve lived through and I can take those and make it authentic. So yeah, I can relate to this character on a very personal level.”

This is your first TV role. Had you been watching what was going on in the TV world and thinking you wanted to get involved in that space?

“The industry has changed a lot … they spend so much money on streaming shows now — more than features — that they finally have lured the best-of-the-best in talent. Everyone. I was just speaking to a producer the other day and he asked me if I’d rather go (theatrical) or streaming, and I said streaming service. In today’s (environment), unless you’re doing some kind of bombastic tentpole movie — a Marvel extravaganza — you’re better off in streaming, I think.”

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How has working with people like Taylor Sheridan and Terence Winter, and before that Ryan Coogler on Creed, reinvigorated you in your work as of late?

“When you’re working with guys of that stature it makes you very competitive. You’re also speaking a different language than when you’re working with neophytes. These guys have very strong personalities, and they’re only going to contribute very good things. It’s your job to pick from (the roles) you can do the best in. You can’t do everything right, but you can look at the (parts you’re offered) and say, ‘OK, I can do this one really well.’ They provide you this banquet of choices that you eventually take and make your own.”

How has your approach to your craft changed in the last few decades?

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“I look at it like you would a machine gun. When you’re young, you have unlimited ammunition. You’re spraying it everywhere, mowing everything down. But at my age, you look down and see that you have nine bullets left. So you pick your targets very carefully. You’re not as haphazard. When I look at some of the films I’ve done, I’ve asked myself why I did them. Back then, you think you’re invincible, and someone will come to the rescue — the producer or the director — and that’s not true. You end up taking the blame. Now I look at everything as if it might be the last thing I’ll do. I pretend seriously that this could be my last go-around, so I better nail it. I tell other actors that. I say, ‘You’re young and you’re still foolish — and you deserve to be — but I’m telling you right now. You have to pretend that if this was the last scene you were ever going to perform, is this the way you would do it? Are you happy with this?’ … Then they dig down and find something. I wish someone had told me that when I was 29.”

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What about your acting. How has that changed?

“There’s a lot more gravitas. I look back, and it’s almost like a bodybuilder. When you’re 19, 20 you might have a really good body, but your man muscles don’t come around until you’re 35. That’s when you’ve hit your peak as a bodybuilder. So as you mature as an actor, you’ll find some — like Anthony Hopkins — who keep getting better and better and better. They learn nuance. The younger actors will shout or overdo it, but an older actor can just sit there and with a gesture steal the whole scene … you look at the pros, and it all starts with (Marlon) Brando. He can just look at his finger and it looks easy but it’s not.”

What’s the ingredient that makes you want to play someone?

“They need to be relatable. It’s always fascinating to think of playing a serial killer, but that’s a character that no one is going to be able to relate to. Do I want to spend a year of my life to do something just for myself? And people have a certain expectation from you unless you want to be some sort of iconoclastic renegade actor … I’m here to try and relate to as many people as possible. So I try to touch on issues that are identifiable: Family, isolation, loneliness, adulation … That’s what made Rocky work. It wasn’t because he was a fighter, it was the nuances of his private life that was identifiable.”

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Everyone knows the story of the first Rocky movie, how you could have sold it, but you wouldn’t have been able to star in it. But it took 16 years to make the sixth entry in that series. How hard was it to get Rocky Balboa made?

“That was the hardest one ever. It was a masterclass in rejection. When I tell you nobody wanted it … The comeback was the hardest thing. I would say Rocky Balboa was the hardest and most precious film I’ve ever done because no one wanted to do it. I was done. I was literally told by studios, ‘Rocky’s over and you’re over.’ I was at my lowest depths back then. Even the producer — Irwin Winkler — basically said, ‘Over my dead body.’ I didn’t understand why there was so much hatred. By a miracle, I was in a bar on New Year’s Eve in Mexico and across the room was Joe Roth, who is a producer. He asked me how it was going and if I written anything. So I sent (the script for Rocky Balboa) to him and he called me the next day and said, ‘My wife read it and cried.’ That moment I knew I was in. If the wife cries, you’re in. He saved my career, Joe Roth. That was the beginning of my resurgence.”

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So after all this time, do you still feel like you have something to prove?

“Yeah, isn’t that sad? I think you always have something to prove. People say to me, ‘You have nothing left to prove,’ and those are just words. In your insecure brain there’s always that notion that (makes you wonder), can you still do it? Do you still have it? If you don’t do it, are you going to be forgotten? All these little idiosyncratic, fearful things you have percolating around in your brain keep you moving on. The fear of failure makes you say, ‘I still got something left in me.’ You’re like a fighter until you finally get knocked out cold (laughs). I haven’t been knocked cold yet, but I’ve been staggered a few times. So I’ll keep going on until my wife goes, ‘You’re done.’ Then I’ll pull the plug.”

Tulsa King hits Paramount+ Nov. 13.

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