Luke Grimes Pushed for Riley Green to Join Marshals — “I Knew I Wasn’t Doing Myself Any Favors”

• Country star Riley Green will make his acting debut on popular Yellowstone spinoff Marshals.
• His episodes air this month.
• Without show star Luke Grimes, Riley may never have gotten this role.

Move over, Luke Grimes — there’s a new hunk coming to Marshals. Actually, Luke is the reason country star Riley Green got booked for his first-ever acting role on the Yellowstone spinoff, which premiered on March 1.

“Riley and I were doing a write together and he was talking about wanting to act, and this was right when Marshals was sort of coming together,” Luke recalls in a new interview with SiriusXM The Highway, which aired in its entirety on April 3. “I thought, ‘Man, that’d be kind of cool if he was like in my show.’”

He even had a role in mind for the “Worst Way” hitmaker. “I knew what it was going to be and I knew we were getting into that Navy SEAL stuff, and I was like, ‘He could be like an old team buddy or something.’ He’s got that look to him like he could be a team guy.”

Marshals follows Kayce Dutton’s (Luke) life in this post-Yellowstone sphere. He’s now a U.S. Marshal and is raising a son alone after his wife’s untimely death. Riley’s character is a former Navy SEAL named Garrett who is “troubled” from his days in active duty. He seeks out his Navy teammate, who helps him adapt to a Western lifestyle. Of course, Garrett also plays guitar.

Luke jokes that he knew it wasn’t his best idea to suggest that Riley appear on the show, because he’d be replaced as the hottest draw, from a handsome guy standpoint.

“I knew I wasn’t doing myself any favors. Who wants to stand next to him on screen? You know what I mean? He’s 6’4″ and pretty darn handsome,” the Yellowstone-star-turned-Marshals star continues, “But I was like, ‘You know what, man? I think he’d actually be really good at it, and I think this would be a great way in for him.’”

Marshals showrunner Spencer Hudnut thought so, too.

“He was very aware of who Riley was and wrote him a great part. Then the funny thing was, CBS didn’t know who he was as much as we did,” Luke explains, adding that CBS heads in Los Angeles aren’t as well-versed on country music, so they didn’t know what a star Riley is in that realm.

Fred Hayes/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.

Riley Green as Garrett in Marshals

“They made him audition, and I was like, ‘You’re going to make Riley Green audition for this?’” he says, only half kidding. “Like, we wrote him a part, give it to him. They’re like, ‘No, we want to make sure that, you know, he can act a little bit.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ So he flew out to Utah and I auditioned with him. We read together and I just thought it was the funniest thing ever that he had to audition for something.”

In CBS’ defense, this is Riley’s first big acting role outside of a music video. To date, he’s been a singer and onstage entertainer first and foremost, so it was fair to wonder if he could handle himself on a different stage, and especially in front of a camera.

“He did better than any of us expected that he would do,” Luke reveals. “First time ever on a set like that, never acted before — he crushed it.”

The Marshals frontman is pursuing his own country music career — his sophomore country album, Redbird, dropped Friday (April 3). He has had the opportunity to learn from Riley, whom he now calls a friend. “He gives me advice. I think the thing you learn from Riley is how some people are just so good at handling the entertainment business as a personality, and the way he moves through it so effortlessly,” Luke says. “There’s a lot to learn there. I don’t think that guy gets nervous.”

Marshals airs Sunday nights at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. Luke says to expect Riley’s episodes to come in the next few weeks. A second season has already been promised after a massive premiere to 9.5 million viewers — the most-watched network original series premiere without a football lead-in since 2017.

Amanda Hensel Jermstad is a skilled writer based in Austin, Texas. She spent 14 years as Editor-in-Chief of Taste of Country, where she led coverage of the artists, stories and trends shaping country music. With a career deeply rooted in the genre, Amanda has built a reputation for sharp editorial insight and authentic storytelling. Outside of work, she’s a proud mom of three.