Neal McDonough remembers every detail around the genesis of his new movie The Last Rodeo. He was on set for a film called The Warrant (2020), and he was missing his wife and kids dearly.

“I got gut-punched with this one thought: What would ever happen to me if something happened to (wife) Ruvé? And it just buckled me,” he shares, before recalling how a herd of horses came running across his field of vision on the old Arizona highway where he’d stopped to sob.

“And this thought came into my head, which I know came from above: Write a film about Rocky on a bull for an old dude whose grandson is dying of brain cancer.”

The official movie descriptor is a bit more polished, but that’s just about it. McDonough plays “the old dude,” and, as it turns out, he tells his story just as much as does his character’s. Drunk, broken, defeated and desperate … yeah, the man who famously starred as Malcolm Beck during Season 2 of Yellowstone has been there.

Talking to Taste of Country’s Dutton Rules podcast, McDonough recalls getting fired from an ABC show called Scoundrels (2010) for refusing to kiss any woman but his wife on screen.

“For two years, I just didn’t work,” he remembers. “I didn’t have anything.”

“They took my house away, cars away, everything. And at that time, I drank myself kind of silly just to kind of push everybody away and, and wallow in my own self pity.”

Related: 17 Most Stunning Yellowstone Deaths, Ranked

The Last Rodeo (in theaters May 23) finds former rodeo champion Joe Wainwright on the back end of that kind of self-pity. His wife died several years prior, which led him to all kinds of self-destruction and strained his relationship with his daughter (Sally) and grandson (Cody).

When Cody is diagnosed with life-threatening brain cancer, Joe ponders a return to bull-riding to pay for the expensive surgeries. Along the way he works to repair several important relationships, including his relationship with God.

“If it weren’t for my wife, Ruvé, you know, I wouldn’t be here today,” McDonough says. “She got me through the problems that I went through all those years ago. She put my butt back into church. She got me to stop drinking and focus on what was important in life. And that was on God.”

To explain how something similar happens in the film would be to spoil a truly great cinematic tear-jerker. Much of the movie is centered around the world of bull-riding, and for those scenes, McDonough and director Jon Avent (Fried Green Tomatoes, Risky Business, Black Swan) went to great lengths to capture accuracy.

That is absolutely 59-year-old McDonough riding bulls alongside several real-life rodeo champions. The PBR made their bulls and riders available, feeling confident that the sport would be portrayed accurately. Champion Kyle Sherwood was his coach and mentor.

“I’m so stinking proud of this movie I can barely talk about it.”

“The amount of hours that this butt has been on a mechanical bull is astounding,” McDonough admits. “There’s a mechanical bull in a bar right around the corner from my house and on off hours, I’d go in there and just practice and practice and practice and practice.”

“My dream was to make sure that everyone — every rider who saw me do this — knew that I worked my tail off to make sure that it was authentic. And those guys made sure it was authentic. And they busted me up and would laugh their butts off at me falling off and falling off and get back, get back up again.”

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan also helped. He’s the master of authenticity and detail, and for a full season of Yellowstone and then another of Tulsa King (as Cal Thresher, foil to Sylvester Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi), McDonough got to watch.

Westerns were the main food group in his TV diet as a kid, but as a professional, it’s been a long list of villains and tough guys.

This role allows him to turn that corner. He’s now able able to be the one who gets to kiss the girl in the end, which isn’t a problem at all, because in this movie, that character is played by Ruvé McDonough.

That’s appropriate on so many levels.

“When you go through hard times in life, you understand and you learn so much,” he shares. “And at that point, my wife Ruvé and I kind of decided, well, let’s start making films that touch upon that faith and family.”

A football movie called Greater was first, followed by The Shift and Homestead, both partnerships with Angel Studios.

“And now we get The Last Rodeo coming out, which is really our baby because I wrote it. Ruvé and I built this right from the beginning.”

Find the full conversation with McDonough in the podcast player above, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you podcast. He also spoke at length about his time on Yellowstone, which included a memorable end scene with John Dutton, played by his longtime friend Kevin Costner.