Yellowstone’s Jefferson White - who played Jimmy on Taylor Sheridan's hit series - has revealed he was originally up for a very different role on the show: Kayce Dutton.

Admittedly, having watched White play Jimmy for five seasons, it’s fairly difficult to envision him stepping into the shoes of Kayce, who was ultimately played by Luke Grimes.

But honestly, the best part of this story might be that White seemingly knew straight away that he wasn't Kayce. Before Grimes made the role his own, White was sent the Yellowstone script with Kayce in mind. He loved the script, loved the character, but when it came to actually playing him,, his reaction was “That’s not me.”

And, looking back now, what an instinct that was because Kayce Dutton feels a world away from the Jimmy Hurdstrom we now know. And credit to White for sticking to his guns, despite it being a considerably bigger part, both in the series and career-wise.

Kayce comes into Yellowstone as a former Navy SEAL. He’s capable, tough, dangerous when he needs to be and already looks like he belongs in that hostile world.

Jimmy, meanwhile, can barely stay on a horse. He arrives at the ranch completely out of his depth, learning pretty much everything as he goes and spending a fair amount of those early episodes looking like he’s about five minutes away from either getting himself killed, or being shouted at by Rip. That was the character White saw himself in.

Rather than just auditioning for Kayce and hoping for the best, he went back through the script, found Jimmy and recognised something there immediately: “a guy trying desperately to keep up, in over his head, trying to survive in a world that’s really new to him.” So he auditioned for him too. And we're glad he did, because it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Grimes as Kayce now, but it’s probably even harder to imagine Yellowstone without the version of Jimmy we know and love.

He took a character who could quite easily have just been the inexperienced ranch hand everyone picked on, and gave him one of the best arcs in the whole series. We watched him go from someone who knew absolutely nothing about being a cowboy to working at the 6666 Ranch in Texas, eventually becoming the very thing he looked so far away from when we first met him. Which makes White’s original instinct even better.

White was handed one of the leading roles, looked further down the script at the nervous guy who couldn’t ride a horse and basically went - nope, that one’s me.

Turns out he knew Jimmy, before he’d even played him.