Yellowstone Star Suffers Injury From Terrifying Bear Attack

Wes Bentley of Yellowstone says he was attacked by a bear during a camping trip, but separating fact from fiction is proving a bit challenging.

By Michileen Martin | Published

Kevin Costner‘s Yellowstone co-star Wes Bentley claims he injured his foot kicking a bear on a camping trip, but dissecting the fact from fiction is proving a little challenging. Bentley recently appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show to promote his series and when the host ask him what happened, he said he “roundhouse kicked” a bear that attacked his family during a camping trip. He then joked that the beast was emotionally hurt by the conflict, and that he let it stay with the family and eat for a while.

Before telling the story, Wes Bentley asked Clarkson, “do you want the real story or do you want the cool story?” Clarkson choose the cool version, which might suggest that nothing Bentley said is true and yet this isn’t the first time the Yellowstone star has told this particular tale. As reported by The Express earlier this month at the premiere of his show’s fifth season, Bentley told the same story when asked about his injured foot. Other interviews with the man who plays Jamie Dutton have yielded the same strange tale.

We’re left to assume one of two things is true: either Yellowstone‘s Wes Bentley did injure his foot in a confrontation with a bear, or Yellowstone‘s Wes Bentley is really, really bad at coming up with new jokes. Then again, if his injury is the result of a bear, we would wonder what he meant by asking Kelly Clarkson if she wanted the “real story or the cool story.” It’s difficult to imagine any story involving getting hurt in a clash with a bear–and surviving–to be anything but unquestionably cool.

yellowstone wes bentley
Wes Bentley in Yellowstone

Of course it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Wes Bentley was attacked by a bear sometime after Yellowstone‘s fifth season wrapped. The beasts are occasionally known to get aggressive, like the 500 pound bear nicknamed Hank the Tank who was reportedly ransacking the Lake Tahoe region of California earlier this year. There was no word on citizens having martial arts battles with Hank as far as we can tell, however.

Regardless of what happened to Wes Bentley’s foot, it thankfully hasn’t had a negative impact on the performance of Yellowstone Season 5’s premiere. The new season opened this Sunday night on the Paramount Network, CMT, TV Land and Pop to some epic numbers. The premiere is thus far the most watched episode in the entire series.

In fact, the hunger for more Yellowstone is so intense it’s even impacting platforms Wes Bentley’s show isn’t even on. Fans mistakenly believing the Season 5 premiere would be streaming on Paramount+ crashed the streamer with their traffic.