During a conversation with TalkShopLive ahead of his new album, That's Just Me, Riley Green has opened up about how he relished the challenge of acting in Marshals with his buddy, Luke Grimes. The high-profile gig served as his first on-screen acting role.

Green portrays Garrett - or Double-G, as he known to his Navy SEAL pals - who reappears after many years, staying with Kayce (Grimes) as he attempts to overcome his PTSD.

When asked by Kelly Sutton about the role, Green reflects, “Well, in Marshals, I played a former Navy SEAL that had pretty extreme PTSD...What's so different to filming music videos or commercials or anything like that I've done, is I'm playing somebody else”.

He adds, “There's a lot of pressure to get that right, you know? So I found myself leaning on...there were some Navy SEALs that were on set that we could kind of pick their brain a little bit, and I really enjoyed the process of trying to get into character and figure out what would this person be doing and how would they do it. It was a real challenge at a point in my career when I felt like I needed one”.

Green underlines that it was undoubtedly outside his comfort zone, but he relished the opportunity to push himself, “You know, I wanted something that was different and wanted to learn something new, and it's such a great tie-in with country music”.

The Alabama native pays homage to how Taylor Sheridan and Music Supervisor Andrea von Foerster have always made a point of showcasing artists in the Yellowstone universe, “Those Yellowstone shows in general [and] all the spin-off shows are such a great way for a lot of artists to get discovered. There's a lot of artists that you hear their music on those shows, so it was something I really enjoyed”.

Interestingly, Green hints that there may be more acting gigs in his future, “I could see myself doing a lot more of that, and I've actually been looking at some other roles”.

He discusses his dream roles, which include a Field of Dreams-style movie, as well as expressing how much he'd love to appear in a Western - ideally, with Tim McGraw. McGraw, of course, starred in another Yellowstone spin-off, 1883, with his wife, Faith Hill.

Green draws a fascinating comparison between writing songs and creating a character in a scene, “I think it was writing a song on a bigger scale. Really, I mean, it's completely different. You can you can write a song and feel a little hidden from it”.

He expands, “People listen to the song and they cannot know who sings it, and still like the song. When you're acting, you're there. You know, you're in it. They're watching you, so you're almost trying to get out of your voice when you're acting. You know, for me, I was already known to a lot of people as ‘Riley Green, country singer’. So when I go and act, I don't want to come off as him to make that character believable. So you're kind of trying to get out of your skin when you're acting versus writing a song. You're wanting to tell people your story in a lot of ways”.

The ‘My Way’ crooner concludes, “So it's very different. I feel like there's a level of performance when you're on-stage performing, whether you're playing a sad song and you perform it sadly, or if you're playing a happy song, and maybe you're not in the best of moods, but you act like you are. But I'm always playing myself. So when I was doing the role on Marshals, it was a completely different thing”.

With news breaking this week that The Neal Agency, which looks after the likes of Green, Morgan Wallen and Ella Langley, have partnered with WIN Artists in order to open up their roster to more TV and Film roles, it seems Green will be getting plenty of chances to flex his acting muscles. Especially given it was his first role, his depiction of Garrett undoubtedly felt convincing, and we're excited to see what other performances he has up his sleeve following his new album, That's Just Me. The eagerly anticipated studio record, which includes recent singles ‘Think As You Drunk’ and ‘Imagine That’, arrives on Friday, September 18th 2026.