A general consensus on friendship would likely reveal that all many of us want in life is a friend willing to be there for us. That kind of friendship makes life worth living, and it’s one that Tim McGraw shares with a special co-star in his newest Paramount series 1883.
McGraw asked his longtime friend Tom Hanks if he’d like to have a cameo in a show he was working on. Hanks quickly agreed and only asked one thing of McGraw in return.
McGraw and his wife, Faith Hill, are close friends with Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, so when McGraw asked him to be part of the show, it was an invitation as both a colleague and a friend. Hanks appeared in the show in a series of flashbacks, taking on the role of a uniformed Civil War general named George Meade.
Talking to Cinemablend, McGraw had this to say about Hanks’ warm, comfortable, and motivating presence on set:
“You never want to botch a scene when you got Tom Hanks in there with you, but yeah, he’s a great guy. We’ve been friends for a long time. Rita, his wife, and Faith are best friends, and Tom and I’ve been friends for 25 years, 24 years. I knew that there was this part in there, and I gave him a call said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in showing up doing a cameo in this show that we’re doing?’ And he goes, ‘Tell me when to be there,’ and he just showed up.”
Hanks took part in a series that’s currently wowing audiences everywhere without knowing much about the role other than where to go to film it. 1883, the prequel to Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone, is a beautiful and heartwrenching tale about life on the journey to finding something else, living on the road, and surviving against the odds to call a place home.
You can see McGraw, Hill, and of course Hanks in 1883, the first episodes of which are now available to stream on Paramount Plus