Kevin Costner Rejects His “Republican Actor” Label: Neither Party “Represents Anything That I Think”

Yellowstone star Kevin Costner has never been afraid to speak his mind, and that goes double when it comes to the 2020 presidential election. In a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Beast, the actor took aim at everything from President Trump’s “dangerous” war on the Post Office to the “dumbing-down” of U.S. history. When it comes to November, the self-proclaimed independent is in a difficult spot: “The Democratic Party doesn’t represent anything that I think, and neither does the Republican Party right now — at all,” he said of the two-party system. “So, I find it too limiting.”

As the United States undergoes a reckoning of its racist past, Costner, star of now-criticized film Dances with Wolves, has found himself at an interesting juncture. When asked about the film’s depiction of the Civil War and the push to remove Confederate monuments, Costner insisted that at the time, the country “couldn’t live up” to the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

“While very intelligent men were drafting it, women weren’t drafting it, and the only people who could vote were people with property,” said the actor. “Women couldn’t vote, Native Americans couldn’t vote, Black people couldn’t vote, people without property couldn’t vote. America is an idea, and we have a chance to live up to it. And we haven’t done it.”

Costner added that the COVID-19 pandemic has “exposed” Americans’ inability to support one another, and as a result, weakened our international standing. “We don’t put others in front of ourselves, and when we marginalize people like we did — enslave them — we never recovered from that. So the idea of the [Confederate] statues, I don’t think they’re appropriate.”

The Yellowstone star may have taken a few shots at the Trump administration, but he assured The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern that his criticism extends to both parties. “There are individuals that are placing their careers above the national good,” said the actor. “I’m not just talking about [Trump]. I’m talking about anybody in politics. You can look at him, and you can look at all the senators and congressmen. Public service isn’t about your second term — it’s about the moment, and you’re supposed to let history judge it.”

With that in mind, Costner takes issue with being labeled a “Republican actor” in the 1980s and ’90s. The Postman star endorsed Democratic nominee Pete Buttigieg in late 2019 — “I felt this was a man who had leadership capabilities and a vision,” he said — but he insisted that he typically goes “back and forth on [his] votes” depending on the candidate.

“I’m an independent. I vote for who I think has the best interests of the country and how we sit in the world,” he told Stern. “If someone is lying to their base, lying to the general public, then they’re not serving any purpose — other than for themselves.

“What you have to try to lean on is that every four years we get to decide whether we’re going in the right direction or we’re not,” continued Costner. “And we now, because of the way the country is set up– which is beautiful — we have that opportunity. And anyone who would interfere with that process in a deliberate way to have an outcome — that’s criminal. And it spits on 200 years of freedom.”

Read Kevin Costner’s entire interview with Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast.

Where to stream Yellowstone