Paramount+ has renewed “Tulsa King” for a fifth season, and the show is going home. The renewal landed on Monday, eleven days before season four premieres on Friday, October 16th. Production on season five has already started in New York, which replaces Atlanta as the home base of the series. The move follows the story. Season five will explore the mafia roots of Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone), the New York capo who was exiled to Oklahoma in the first episode.
The cast is changing with it. Scarlet Rose Stallone, the star’s daughter, has been promoted to series regular as Spencer. Four actors join her as new series regulars: Erik Palladino, Glenn Fleshler, Nickola Shreli and Anthony Skordi. Paramount has not said who any of the four will play, and the character details are being kept under wraps. Terence Winter stays on as head writer and executive producer. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Tulsa King” seasons one through three.
Production on season five has already started in New York, which replaces Atlanta as the home base of the series.”
The studio framed the move as a story decision first. “We are thrilled to bring fans even more of this incredible series, and to be shooting the next season of Tulsa King in New York, where Dwight Manfredi’s story will continue to evolve,” said Drew Brown, who runs physical production at Paramount Television Studios. His next line was for Georgia: “We’re proud of the work we’ve done in Georgia, and it remains an important venue for us.” That is a studio keeping an old relationship warm on its way out the door. Hope Knight, who heads Empire State Development, pointed to the state’s film tax credit program and called the show “the latest in a growing list of projects proudly filmed in New York.”
This is the third home the show has had in five seasons. Season one shot in Oklahoma City and Tulsa in 2022. It filmed some of its New York scenes on location in Brooklyn, where Stallone was photographed on the street in character that May. Season two moved production to Eagle Rock Studios in Norcross outside Atlanta. Georgia has stood in for Oklahoma ever since. Now the camera goes to the city where Dwight’s story started. Stallone told TVLine the production will be in New York for “four or five months.” That is a full season on location and not a few days of street exteriors.
New York never really left the show. Dwight served 25 years in prison and came out to find his own family exiling him to Tulsa. The man still holding that grudge is Quiet Ray Renzetti (James Russo), the New York mob boss who has been Dwight’s rival since season three. In season three Ray sent Russell Lee Washington Jr. (Samuel L. Jackson) to kill Dwight. Russell would not do it. He walked away to start over somewhere new, and that choice became the spinoff now called “Frisco King”. Winter told TVLine that the rivalry between Dwight and Ray “heats up considerably” in season four, with enemies coming “not only from within the Mob itself, but also the tech and political worlds.”
The season four logline already points east. Paramount’s description says every move “drags Dwight deeper into the street instincts he left behind in New York.” Read next to Monday’s news, that line looks like a setup. Season four pulls Dwight back toward the man he was before Tulsa. Season five puts him in the city where that man was made. Our guess is that the road to New York runs straight through Ray. Paramount has not said whether season five means a trip home, a permanent move or a look back at the young Dwight. That part is our reading and not an announcement, but the direction is confirmed.
It is the biggest change the series has made since its pilot, and it is the right one. A fish out of water story runs out of road once the fish owns the pond. Four seasons in, Dwight has a saloon and a dispensary and a whiskey business in Oklahoma. The joke of an old gangster in cowboy country has been told. New York gives the show a pressure that is bigger than another local rival. It also gives Stallone the setting his character was built for, after three seasons of a New York capo being filmed in Georgia.
It is an odd turn for the Sheridan-verse. Taylor Sheridan’s shows live in the middle of the country, with “Yellowstone” in Montana and “Landman” in West Texas. Even the spinoff went the other way. “Frisco King” started life as “NOLA King”, a New Orleans story, before it moved to Frisco, Texas, a suburb outside Dallas. So the franchise now has one gangster heading into the heartland while the original one heads back to the big city.
The new cast reads like a New York mob roster. Palladino is best known as Dr. Dave Malucci on “ER”, and more recently he played Pino Greco, an underboss in the Genovese family, on MGM+’s “Godfather of Harlem”. He also plays Stallone’s boxing coach Pete in “I Play Rocky”, Peter Farrelly’s film about the making of “Rocky” with Anthony Ippolito as the young Stallone. Now he gets the real one. Fleshler played Orrin Bach on “Billions” and the bootlegger George Remus on “Boardwalk Empire”, the HBO series Winter created. Skordi played Carlo Gambino in “The Offer”, the Paramount+ series about the making of “The Godfather”. Shreli played Peter Hoxha on Starz’s “Power Book IV: Force”.
Three of the four have already played gangsters, and the “Boardwalk Empire” thread keeps getting longer. Vincent Piazza played Lucky Luciano on that show and has been in Dwight’s crew since season one. Gretchen Mol spent five seasons on it and joins as a series regular in season four, playing a Tulsa politician named Amanda Clark. Winter also wrote for “The Sopranos”, so this is a writer who has spent most of his career inside the East Coast mob. Our read is that he is building season five around the world he knows best, but Paramount has not confirmed a single character name.
Spencer’s promotion is the one piece that points back to Oklahoma. Scarlet Rose Stallone has played her since season one. Spencer started as a barista in Tulsa and ended up working on Dwight’s ranch. Promoting her in the same season the show leaves Tulsa says the Oklahoma side of Dwight’s life is not being written out. We think that is smart, because a show that drops its title city entirely would lose the thing that set it apart from every other mob drama.
The steady part of all this is Winter. He ran season one and came back as head writer for season two. He left before season three, when Dave Erickson came over from “Mayor of Kingstown” to run the show. Erickson left in turn, and Winter returned for season four. The numbers explain why Paramount keeps betting on the series. The season two premiere drew 2 million global viewers on its first day, which Paramount+ called an all-time record for the service. It reached 5.4 million households in its first week. Renewing before season four even airs is a vote of confidence built on that history.
Season four still has to do its job first. Dwight starts it fighting corrupt politicians and new enemies, with a “crushing personal loss” promised along the way. Martin Starr, Jay Will, Annabella Sciorra, Frank Grillo, Neal McDonough, Garrett Hedlund and Dana Delany are all back. It premieres on Friday, October 16th on Paramount+. By the time it ends, the cameras will already be rolling in New York.
What Do You Think? Is moving production to New York the right call for a show called “Tulsa King”? Should season five settle things with Quiet Ray once and for all? And which of the four new series regulars are you most excited to see opposite Stallone?
Catch up properly: every Taylor Sheridan series in chronological order on our Timeline Hub’s Sheridan-verse timeline.
See you on the next binge!
