Neal McDonough’s Most Unexpected Role Was in Star Trek’s Best Movie — Long Before Yellowstone and Tulsa King

Neal McDonough has become Hollywood’s undisputed architect of controlled menace, the chilling force that hushes a room—from ruling Yellowstone as Malcolm Beck to going blow-for-blow with Sylvester Stallone as Tulsa King’s Cal Thresher. Power, precision, intimidation: it’s his signature, and audiences can’t look away.

Neal McDonough walks into a scene and the temperature drops. If you know him as Malcolm Beck on Yellowstone or Cal Thresher on Tulsa King, you know the vibe: controlled, precise, and a little terrifying. What is funny is where that all really started for him: not with Taylor Sheridan or Marvel, but in a Starfleet uniform.

The Star Trek uniform that quietly set the tone

Back in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), McDonough played Lieutenant Hawk. He was not the mastermind, not the captain, not the bad guy. He was a straight-ahead Starfleet officer doing the job, and in classic Trek fashion, he did not make it out. Later tie-in novels made Hawk canonically gay, even though the movie itself never touched it — a small but meaningful detail that adds weight in hindsight.

McDonough has said that First Contact was a crash course with legends. He learned on the fly while getting hazed (lovingly) by the leads, and it stuck.

"Patrick Stewart became such a paternal figure to me because he knew it was my first big movie. Jonathan Frakes, who also directed, took it upon himself to bust my nuggets every single day on set. They said, 'Look, we only have you for a short amount of time. You're about to die, you're the red shirt guy. So we're going to make fun of you all day long.'"

That was long before Marvel fans met his Dum Dum Dugan. And it is a straight line from Hawk — the capable officer with a doomed assignment — to the menacing power players he has been owning ever since.

How McDonough became TV's smoothest threat

Some actors are born to play heroes. McDonough is built for the smile that cuts. His Tulsa King character, Cal Thresher, is a great example: a powerful, territorial businessman who turns every conversation with Sylvester Stallone's Dwight Manfredi into a slow-motion threat. That aura did not arrive overnight, either.

He first leaned fully into darkness on Desperate Housewives as Dave Williams, a polite new neighbor who gradually reveals a mess of grief and rage. McDonough put it plainly to the Los Angeles Times:

"Dave is this really sweet guy next door, and then something tragic happens to him, and his personality splits in half. You like Dave and you feel for him, but he also creeps the hell out of you."

From there, he kept sharpening the blade: the unnervingly charming Robert Quarles on Justified; Yellowstone's Malcolm Beck, whose brutality echoed in the story long after he was gone; and Damien Darhk across the Arrowverse, played with this relaxed, almost casual cruelty that says evil does not need to shout.

• Desperate Housewives: Dave Williams, a grief-splintered suburbanite who slowly curdles
• Justified: Robert Quarles, all smiles until the floor drops out
• Yellowstone: Malcolm Beck, wealth weaponized into lasting damage
• Arrowverse: Damien Darhk, evil with unnerving ease
• Tulsa King: Cal Thresher, the businessman who makes politics feel like a protection racket

Tulsa King now: where Cal Thresher stands after Season 3

If you are wondering whether McDonough is still in the mix on Tulsa King, the show practically left the porch light on for him.

Season 3 put Dwight Manfredi into open war with Tulsa liquor boss Jeremiah Dunmire after Dwight bought a generations-old distillery from Theo Montague. Dunmire hit back hard — his crew attacked Theo and torched his mansion with him inside. By Episode 10, Dwight answered in kind and burned Dunmire alive. The finale did not end with the kind of wild cliffhanger earlier seasons leaned on, but it left plenty of loose ends to yank.

Cal Thresher is one of them. He shifted from enemy to uneasy ally, then won the Oklahoma governor's race. So the real question is not whether he will honor a deal with Dwight. It is what being 'in Dwight's pocket' even looks like when you have state-level leverage and a Rolodex full of political friends. That setup is begging for McDonough to do his favorite thing: play power like it is oxygen.

Season 4 is already shaping around that political angle. Gretchen Mol has signed on as a series regular, playing a Tulsa politician named Amanda Clark — tailor-made to complicate Thresher's new world. Paramount+ has renewed the show, and there is a notable creative move too: Terence Winter is returning as executive producer and head writer for Season 4.

As for timing, nothing is official. If Season 4 follows Season 3's production pattern, an early return could land as soon as mid-May. Again, that is the optimistic read until Paramount+ stamps a date.

And if you are keeping track of the Sheridan-verse sprawl, there is a spinoff coming: NOLA King, starring Samuel L. Jackson, is likely to head into production in February 2026.

Where to watch

Star Trek: First Contact is available to rent on Apple TV.

Yellowstone and Tulsa King are streaming on Paramount+.