Neal McDonough Says Hollywood Turned on Him for Refusing to Kiss Anyone Other Than His Wife

Neal McDonough is opening up about his career.

The 59-year-old Yellowstone actor claims he was shut out of Hollywood for refusing to kiss anyone other than his wife, Ruvé McDonough, in his projects.

“I always had in my contracts that I wouldn’t kiss another woman on screen,” he explained on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast.

“My wife didn’t have any problem with it. It was me, really, who had a problem. I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to put you through it. I know we’re going to start having kids, and I don’t want to put my kids through it.’”

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“When I wouldn’t do it, and they couldn’t understand it, Hollywood just completely turned on me,” he said.

“They wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore. And for two years, I couldn’t get a job, and I lost everything you could possibly imagine. Not just houses and material things, but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity, everything.”

Neal claimed he was in “a big, ugly tailspin for a couple of years,” and at one point, he was fired from a TV show after declining to shoot an intimate scene.

“They came to my trailer and the wardrobe lady says, ‘Excuse me, would you like to be wearing a sock for the scene?’” he recalled. “I remember, I said, ‘I’m from Cape Cod and I don’t wear socks. I’ve never worn socks. I’m a loafer and no socks guy.’ She’s like, ‘What?’ And she closed the door and she walks away.”

A producer allegedly arrived a few minutes later to clarify that they needed him to wear a modesty sock for a simulated sex scene. He pushed back, which led to an ultimatum: “They said, ‘Well, unless you do it, we’re gonna have to replace you,’” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘Well, then replace me because I’m not gonna do it.’ And they fired me.”

“I remember flying home from Albuquerque and flying over the desert in New Mexico and realizing, ‘Okay, I just got fired from a TV show. I’d have a better chance of surviving in that desert than surviving when I land in Hollywood.’ And I was right.”

He added it was “a very painful, costly ordeal” as the show sued him.

“I knew I did the right thing for my marriage,” he said in the interview. “I knew I did the right thing for [God]. And I knew I did the right thing for me.”

He previously told Closer Weekly in 2019 that he was dropped from the short-lived ABC series Scoundrels in 2010 for refusing to film intimate scenes.

In his new movie The Last Rodeo, which he wrote, directed, and stars in, he cast his wife in the movie.

“Well, my wife is really hot. She is a good-looking woman, and everything else can pale as compared to my wife, Ruvé,” he said, before explaining, “It was financed. It was ready to go and I said, ‘I am not doing the movie unless you play my wife. Because I am not going to kiss some other woman on screen.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, I am not an actor.’ I’m like, ‘Well, you are now. So let’s go.’”

Find out what’s happening with his other project, Tulsa King!