Gretchen Mol Tulsa King Season 4 role, Digi Mart USA News: Following her starring turn on Boardwalk Empire from 2010 to 2014 and a guest role in Yellowstone in 2018, Gretchen Mol says she is thrilled her path has led to working with the creators of both shows, Terence Winter and Taylor Sheridan, on the Paramount+ series Tulsa King, as well as the show’s star Sylvester Stallone.
“I feel so grateful that he thinks of me, still,” Mol said of Winter in a recent Zoom conversation. “First of all, I had worked with him on Boardwalk Empire, and we’ve always wanted to work together since, and then I did a little stint on Yellowstone with Taylor Sheridan.”
Mol said Tulsa King first entered her orbit as executive producers Sheridan, Winter and Stallone were preparing for the show’s first season, which premiered on Paramount+ in 2022. “This is all when COVID was happening and I was working out in LA on something,” Mol recalled.
“We sort of talked about it at that point, and then it just took until Season 4 to find the right opportunity.”
That opportunity came in the form of Lt. Gov.
Amanda Clark, a squeaky-clean politician who immediately butts heads with Stallone’s not-so-squeaky-clean former mob capo-turned-Tulsa business magnate, Dwight “The General” Manfredi. “They were looking for a little bit of an antagonist, and they thought of me,” Mol said with a laugh, alluding to head writer Winter’s skill with a pen.
“You know when you’re going in with a writer like Terry that it’s just going to be great and you’re going to have delicious material, and that’s what excited me about it,” Mol said. “I had watched the first three seasons of the show and I found it to be so entertaining and funny.
I love how the characters have developed over the seasons.”
Mol’s history with Stallone dates back to 2000, when she played a small, uncredited role in his crime thriller Get Carter. While Mol and Stallone never worked together on set, they had interactions through phone calls, and meeting him in person left a positive impression.
“The interesting thing was when my name came up for this job, he was concerned that I was too sweet for it, and I was, like, ‘Wait, have you seen Boardwalk Empire?'” Mol recalled, laughing.
Mol has shown in the first four episodes of Tulsa King Season 4 that Amanda is anything but sweet. While Amanda’s efforts to tear down Dwight’s empire in Episode 3 are brutal enough, she becomes downright vindictive in Episode 4, which is new on Paramount+ on Friday.
Gretchen Mol begins the first episode of Season 4 as Lt. Gov.
Amanda Clark, second in command to newly elected Oklahoma Gov. Cal Thresher (Neal McDonough).
Because of the governor’s checkered past and his previous dealings with Dwight, Cal allows the former mob capo’s business practices to continue without overbearing government oversight, something a by-the-book Amanda opposes.
Dwight learns how tough Amanda can be after the Season 4 premiere, when Cal and his communications director, Dwight’s girlfriend Margaret Devereaux (Dana Delaney), die in a plane crash. After Amanda is sworn in as Oklahoma’s new governor, she vows to run Dwight out of Tulsa and back to New York City by stripping him of the special privileges he has used to operate his criminal enterprise.
Amanda’s iron fist comes down in Episode 3 when she shuts down nearly all of Dwight’s businesses, prompting him to confront her at a public fundraiser. In Episode 4, the governor goes for the jugular by beginning eminent domain proceedings to seize the Fennario Ranch, which was willed to Dwight by Margaret.
Suddenly, Amanda’s facade as a clean governor begins to crack, since seizing the ranch would free up a location for an AI data center proposed by tech giant Bradley Van Heusen (Flula Borg). Bradley is one of Amanda’s biggest financial supporters.
Mol said she welcomes the introduction of real-life hot-button issues such as government overreach and the spread of AI data centers into the storyline because they are relatable to viewers today. “[People are] feeling it in the world.
You’re feeling these kinds of people out there,” Mol said. “That’s the brilliance of Terry, really, of understanding what’s happening now, being able to weave it into the storyline and recognizing [leaders like Amanda] and knowing how people feel about her.
You know that she’s not all on the up and up, but she’s being very clever about it.”
Mol said that while Amanda is proving she is not exactly the model politician, people in the governor’s position can start out with the right ideals until power corrupts them. “That’s what happens with power.
It’s harder to hold onto it and maintain your ideals,” Mol said. “We’ll see if Amanda can.”
Off camera, Mol said, she enjoys the company of the cast and creatives. The good vibes, she added, come from the actor at the top of the call sheet.
“I had such a good time this season, and it really hinges on Sylvester Stallone and everybody wanting to be there and having his work ethic,” Mol said. “To see just how engaged he is in his work and how much he cares about it, that filters down to the whole set.
You can just feel in everybody how grateful they are to be there.”
All episodes of Tulsa King Seasons 1-3 and the first four episodes of Season 4 are streaming on Paramount+.
