‘Tulsa King’ Finale: Andrea Savage On Stacy Being “Broken” And Her First Time Acting With Sylvester Stallone

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of Tulsa King!!!!!!

We didn’t expect that ATF agent Stacy Beale (Andrea Savage) would become the biggest enemy to Mafia-capo-turned-Tulsa-gang-leader Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) at the end of the first season of Tulsa King. But when Stacy, who spent the season in a highly-inappropriate friends-with-benefits situation with Dwight, has him arrested for dropping her a $1 million bribe after she was shot by biker gang leader Caolan Waltrip (Richie Coster), she turned from frenemy to possibly the “Big Bad” of Season 2.

Savage sat down with Decider to talk about the finale, why Stacy had enough of Dwight’s games, and what she thinks being a bad-but-good guy in Season 2 will be like. She also discusses working with Stallone and how surprised she was when the first couple of episodes of the series were edited into being more broad and comedic than what she shot.

DECIDER: The way the finale ended was a bit of a surprise, but it we were felt like we were working towards that all season. There seemed to be a push and pull for Stacy, between loyalty to her job and her feelings for Dwight. How did you feel about where Stacy was doing in the finale?

ANDREA SAVAGE: I really liked it because I felt like, I don’t know if it’s really loyalty to her job, but it’s [about] somebody who who has been sort of in a divorce shutdown, not really living life, not really feeling. She has this connection with somebody, shares a part of herself, then asks him to back off because this will ruin her. That person completely ignores her and in fact, goes the opposite direction, digs deeper in, really screws her over. And she finally just takes her lifeline and is like, “I don’t owe you anything.”

When Dwight drops that that thumb drive with with the million dollars for her, which he stole from biker gang leader Caolan Waltrip, that was the misdirection. I figured she was just going take it and live her life. What do you think motivated Stacy to flip on him? 

I think that she basically is like, “I need to do what’s right for Stacey,” and she needs to get her job back. If she doesn’t have a job, she literally has no identity; she has no close friends, she has no family. And who knows where she’s gonna go within her job.I think in that place, it was like, “That’s nice that you did that. But I don’t owe you anything. I asked you for help. And you screwed me over and didn’t even think about how this would affect me ever.” It didn’t ever stop him for one minute. And so I think when you get to a certain age, and somebody shows their true colors to you, your loyalty to them goes away.

Is it also a matter of she doesn’t want Dwight, or any man for that matter, being in control of her life?

I think she’s just like, “I’m the only one I can trust. And I’m gonna be in control it whether a man or a woman.” I also think she’s a different kind of woman that Dwight has never had experience with because he went away for 25 years. And I would assume the women he was with before were very submissive, and you know, the classic sort of mobster girls. He’s not experienced with women who are like, “No, I don’t owe you anything. And I’m going to do what’s right for me.”

Where do you think this puts Dwight and Stacy for Season 2?

Full speculation, I think that they’re going to be at odds. I think they’re very similar in lots of ways. It feels like they will be really truly at odds.

Do you think you’re set up to be the “Big Bad” for Season Two? How do you feel about that?

Maybe! How great would that be? Oh, I think it’d be super fun.

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Dwight is a bad guy, but he’s the good guy here, the anti hero. How will it feel to be the bad guy who’s actually the good guy? Because you’re a government agent who’s taking this mobster who just bribed you and putting him behind bars? But what the audience sees is you as the bad guy.

What I would love to think is it’s not really as about like, she works for the government and this and that; it’s that she’s an alcoholic, who also has been thrown into Oklahoma  against her will, doesn’t know who her family is, doesn’t have any sort of grounding. She’s a broken person. But I think that’s the more interesting part, is survival and what you’ve got to do to survive and assessing your life.

Do you think we’re going to delve a little bit more into her background next season?

I hope so. Because right now, I feel like it’s a little vague.

Did you talk to [showrunner] Terence Winter or [creator] Taylor Sheridan about Stacy? At any point want to know what’s going on with Stacy?

Listen, when you have a first season show, there’s so much people are trying to figure out, and some of it just gets figured out along the way. I think Stacy was one of those that wasn’t always as clear, and she’s sort of becoming who she is as it goes along. So I think she’s been a little bit more of a work in progress, versus some of the other characters that might have been a little bit more clear.

How did you feel about Stacy going from being an ATF agent who happens to be sleeping with a mobster to someone who is helping Dwight but doesn’t want him to mess with her?

I think it’s more interesting, personally, to play that. I’m just interested to, to really learn more about how she got there. My favorite characters are like Laura Linney’s character on Ozark where it’s not black or white. She’s not one thing or the other.

Had you worked with Stallone before?

No, I’d never met him until we were shooting. The pilot didn’t didn’t have a table read, right. Like, I literally walked on set to shoot the scene where I pick him up in the strip club.

So you walk on set and there’s Sylvester Stallone. As an actor. You obviously have to keep it professional but as someone who has been seeing him in movies for decades, how do you feel when you first see him?

I was fucking nervous! I was nervous and I don’t get nervous easily, but I was like, “This is so out of my normal world of the of the people I’m usually around in comedy.” It just was a such a wild turn. And I was just like, “Oh, is he going to be friendly? Is this going to be awkward? Is there going to be collaboration? Is it going to be the kind of thing where you don’t talk in between scenes, and you just go separate ways, and then you do your thing?” And he really puts you at ease right away. We we sort of ran through the scene. And we did a little like improv thing, and he did something with his hands, and I kind of made fun of him. I was like, [in Stallone voice] “Oh, I’m a guy who does this with my hands!” And he laughed, and I felt like then we were like, relaxed and off to the races.

What would you tell people who know him as a certain kind of actor in a certain kind of genre that would be surprising about him?

I think I would just say, “Go rewatch Rocky, he’s still that actor.” He’s still an incredible actor when he’s given the right material. And he can access like, so many different emotions. I think being his age that he’s at he really allows that vulnerability to come through. Like the scene where I come to tell him that I am an ATF agent, I won’t be able to help him. That scene, I just remember watching him do his coverage of his realization of it. And it was so beautiful and subtle. And I was like, that’s an incredible actor in front of me.

It’s interesting that the season and Stallone started out broad and comedic then his performance changed as the season became more dramatic and Dwight became more layered. Did you notice that change?

When we were shooting it, I’ll be honest, it always felt like we were shooting a drama. I think the amount of comedy that was sort of leaned into for the first couple episodes was a little bit of a surprise to all of us. That’s what the edit leaned into, and maybe cut some of the drama out. So I think we’re all like, “Oh, this is more comedic than we thought we were shooting.”

How do you feel about that? Did you feel like, “I wasn’t here to do another comedy!”

There was the part of me that was like, “Wait, but I want to be doing a drama!” To be honest, I really liked that balance. And I hope that season two can find that balance again. Because I thought that was a really fun, interesting, dark comedy that I really enjoyed.

I did an article that called Stallone and Martin Starr the Odd Couple Of the Year. When you watch the show, did you notice pairings like that that shouldn’t work but end up being great?

You mentioned Martin, he’s the only person I knew going into this; he and I had been friends for a long time. And so I was like, that’s a great pair. I just was like this role is fantastic for Martin. And you know, by surrounding Sly with this sort of odd, just very different from him very different from anything we’ve ever seen him around, much younger. All of that, I think, is just a fun juxtaposition.

Do you think there’s still going to be the mob factor going into Season 2? I was surprised that Dwight basically told Chickie to go away in the finale and he just does. 

Yeah, I am. I don’t know. I hope so. I really like it. But it you know, it surprised me the way that it sort of ended as well.

When you were approached for this role, did you have any reservations at all, given it’s a drama?

I wanted to do a drama. So I sort of put that out into the world. This kind of came and I was like, “Yes, please.”

Why were you in that mode at this stage of your career?

I’ve done a lot of comedy. I had done my show, I’m Sorry, and we were in the middle of shooting season three, and then we were shut down for COVID. But then really got caught in the Warner Brothers mergers and the AT&T’s and everything and then never got to finish the show. I wasn’t ready to jump onto another comedy. And I wanted to start doing things I’d never done before and just go “Let’s start doing some stuff that excites and scares me.”

What do you think you brought to it that that a serious dramatic actress wouldn’t be able to bring to it?

I think I bring the comedic part, that sort of confidence and I think, a different kind of way that character can be seen versus the more cliche dramatic actress playing it. I think just inherently just comedy people like are going to play it slightly different. Because you just come at it from a different way. For a role that I feel like could have been very basic, I like to think that bringing in someone with a comedy background like it just gives it like a little sparkle to it that you kind of can’t put your finger on.

What do you hope to see for Stacy in Season 2?

I want Stacy to fall apart. I’d love to see Stacy just really lean in hard to her darkness and her flaws and see where that gets her.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.