Jimmy has gone through his fair share of tough situations in Yellowstone, and the actor behind him, Jefferson White has too. We’ve seen Jimmy get bucked off horses, beaten up, branded with the Yellowstone Y, and more. However, the actor playing him also has some serious scars from filming Taylor Sheridan’s Western, and they are in an uncomfortable place: “inside of [his] butt cheeks.”
White has been open about how, like Jimmy, he’s totally new to the world of ranching, rodeo and being a cowboy. While he’s loved the opportunity to learn all of this, there’s no denying how hard it is. And this actor has the scars to prove it, as he told ET this story about the ranching and cowboying training the entire Yellowstone cast goes through called Cowboy Camp:
I’ve got some permanent scars. This is a little bit TMI, inside of my butt cheeks there’s a kind of, what do they call them, Rorschach ink blot of scars that will probably never heal. Other than that, I’ve been very lucky. Very sore, very bruised, very sort of beaten up, but very lucky.
It turns out, Cole Hauser, who plays Rip Wheeler and has been open about how he works out for Yellowstone and how physically challenging it is, was with White right after this happened. He told ET his side of the story, saying:
Well, I saw the blood running through his jeans. I was like ‘It’s blood.’ And he was like ‘Yeah, I have saddle sores.’ And I was like ‘Oh man!’ I was like ‘You want me to look at it?’ He was like ‘No!’ And he went and sat in the river.
As Luke Grimes, who plays Kayce Dutton, said in a Yellowstone BTS video, Taylor Sheridan made sure his cast was “on a horse every day,” and ready for the physical challenges that come with cowboying. They were trained by real cowboys before they shot the show, so they could film their sequences as authentically as possible.
Forrie J. Smith, who is an actual cowboy and plays Lloyd, said in the same video:
Being a horseman you have to learn every day. If you think you know it all, they’re gonna trick you and you’re going to start ruining horses.
White made it clear that he’s never been seriously injured working on the show with the horses. He just has some bumps, bruises and unfortunate scars. However, there’s no denying those scars sound pretty terrible. Nevertheless, he did say that learning about cowboying the way he did was the “best-case scenario:”
We are surrounded by brilliant trainers, brilliant horses, it’s a sort of best-case scenario if you’re a moron who has never touched a horse before, which is what I am. So we really were given every opportunity to learn as much as we could, and still fail constantly.
He ended by saying that learning this trade is a “lifelong” experience, and he’s loved it.
Hopefully, we’ll get to see how he’s improved when the final episodes of Yellowstone air on the 2024 TV schedule. We’ve really seen Jimmy grow over every season. So, when the last few Yellowstone installments premiere in November, hopefully, we’ll also get to see how White’s improved since those grueling days of Cowboy Camp that resulted in some gnarly scars.
To see where Jimmy and Jefferson’s cowboying journey began and how he’s evolved into quite the cowboy over the years, both on and off screen, you can stream Seasons 1 through 5A of Yellowstone with a Peacock subscription.