‘Yellowstone’ actor Jefferson White not coming Wyoming International Film Festival

CHEYENNE – Jefferson White, who plays “Jimmy” on Paramount’s hit show “Yellowstone,” will no longer be among the list of attendees for next month’s Wyoming International Film Festival.

“[White] is disappointed because he wanted to come to Cheyenne so bad. … However, his management team said they completely understand and are open to possibility of [White] coming next year,” Rudi Womack, director of the Wyoming International Film Festival, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

White was originally scheduled to appear July 9 for a Q&A session starting at 6:30 p.m., followed by a screening of his film, “Paper Geese.” The event would’ve taken place at the Cheyenne Civic Center.

The opening night red carpet, originally set to start at 5:30 p.m. in Laramie County Community College’s Surbrugg/Prentice Auditorium, has since been moved to 6:30 p.m. due to White’s absence.

All of the events for the rest of the night will continue as planned, with short documentaries about Wyoming artists playing and live fire spinning in the SPA parking lot. The after-party will also still be at 9:30 p.m. at Blue Raven Brewery.

“It’s a really big disappointment, unfortunately,” said Womack. “We just didn’t have the response from the community [that] we were hoping. I think the most disappointing thing is how much work we put into advertising it.”

Looking toward the future, Womack said, “The film festival the last two years has grown so much, and [even though] a lot of the focus this year was on Jeff White … we [still] have Eric Roberts in a film and Jamie Lee Curtis producing one of the films. Also, Lee Child, the author of the ‘Reacher’ series, wrote a film that’s in the festival. … Lily Gladstone’s narrating one of the films. … It’s still the biggest year we’ve ever had.”

As for how this affects pricing, tickets for the five-day, six-night event went down a little bit, from $60 to $50.

Womack concluded by saying, “Nonetheless, we’re extraordinarily grateful to [White] and his team for all the hard work that they put into arranging for him to come here. It was such a generous move of him to participate. Unfortunately, not all live events work out, and that’s the way it is, but we still have 200 films, around 100 filmmakers from around the world coming, a fire dancer, live performances, parties, the whole nine yards.”

For anyone that’s interested in the festival, but maybe couldn’t afford it or was on the fence, both Deselms Fine Art and The Hawthorn Tree have a limited number of free tickets, so stop by either shop before they’re gone.