Men's Lifestyle June 24, 2026 0 Comments

Taylor Sheridan’s Prison Portrayal: Genius Insight or Total Misinformation? Find Out What He’s Hiding!

When I first caught wind that Taylor Sheridan—the mastermind behind hits like Yellowstone and Sicario—was dropping a book, my mind did a double take. I mean, the guy churns out blockbusters and binge-worthy TV shows like clockwork, and now he’s penned a survival guide called How to Not Die in Prison? Cue the big question: What on earth does Taylor Sheridan know about prison life? Turns out, this isn’t just a typical celebrity flex. The real magic lies in Sheridan’s alliance with Tom Nelson, an ex-con who’s been through the wringer and lived to tell the tale. It’s a wild mash-up of Hollywood grit and hard-earned street smarts—a guide crafted not from luxury but from the cold reality behind bars. Curious if it’s just another gimmick or an eye-opening manual that could actually save lives? Buckle up, because this is one read that breaks the mold and drops truths you won’t find on any TV screen. LEARN MORE

5 min read

When I heard Taylor Sheridan had a book coming out, I couldn’t believe this era’s most prolific producer, director, and writer—Yellowstone, Landman, Lioness, Sicario, to name a few—had time to write a book. When I saw the book was a guide, How to Not Die in Prison, I wondered, What does Taylor Sheridan know about prison?

When an advance copy of the title landed on my cell bars in Sing Sing, I was shocked it didn’t get denied because of the censorship rules. On the back cover is an illustration of a sharpened toothbrush and in its pages a tutorial on how to make it: “A sharpened toothbrush can make a decent knife on its own, or you can heat up the brush and insert an old razor blade into the handle,” writes Sheridan’s coauthor, an ex-con named Tom Nelson. (I wouldn’t bring one of those to a knife fight in Sing Sing—the boys in here have real knives.)

This book, I quickly realized, is not Taylor Sheridan breaking into the literary world—it’s really him looking out for Tom Nelson, who did 17 years on an installment plan, mostly in California joints. Nelson got out and became a personal trainer. In the introduction, Sheridan explains how he used to work out at Muscle Mechanics, a gym Nelson owned in Los Angeles. The two became cool. During Covid, Nelson lost his business. Sheridan bought the gym’s weights and machines for the Yellowstone crew in Wyoming. Nelson still struggled. Instead of giving him a loan, Sheridan offered Nelson an opportunity. Having read a script Nelson wrote about his own life (ah, yes, the ex-con autobiographical screenplay), he knew the “dude could write.” It hit Sheridan: “What the world needs is a travel guide to the penitentiary.”

I mean, the world probably doesn’t need a prison survival guide, but it doesn’t matter. Sheridan can do whatever he wants. He’s really “that dude” in Hollywood, and by all accounts he hates Hollywood. Which you gotta love. The boys at Sing Sing, who’ve never seen a ranch and mostly come from New York City, like Sheridan’s cowboy shows. They watch Yellowstone reruns on the Paramount channel (we have televisions in our cells, and Paramount comes with our cable package), and they sometimes binge his other shows, like Tulsa King and Mayor of Kingstown (a show about prison), on the Paramount+ app on contraband cell phones in their cells.

In Stephen Rodrick’s 2018 profile for Esquire, we learn about how Sheridan started from the bottom. As a B-list actor in Sons of Anarchy and Texas Ranger, Sheridan was barely getting by in L.A. until his wife bought him the screenwriting program Final Draft. An autodidact with a knack for narrative, he blew up. So trust: Taylor Sheridan putting his name on this book is a favor. But Nelson mostly delivers. The book does cover most of the bullshit you’ll encounter as a convict.

Sheridan offers a brief setup for every section in How to Not Die in Prison—“Welcome to Prison,” “How to Win Friends and Influence Prisoners,” “The Prison Economy,” “Keeping Your Sanity”—and then hands it off to Nelson. At the outset, Nelson drops his bona fides: a rap sheet, his cred to write the guide. He’s robbed and assaulted and sold drugs. He’s served a handful of stints, six and a half years being the longest and the last. The ideal reader of this book, Sheridan and Nelson suggest, is someone about to turn themselves in: “You’re going to be glad you spent some time prepping for what will likely be the worst experience of your life.”

Thing is, most people heading to prison are already locked up in county jail, not bailed out with time to put their affairs in order and read this book. Those are the white-collar dudes going to a Club Fed camp, but Nelson describes state prison. A book like How to Not Die in Prison will never be totally comprehensive, because there can be vast differences between state prisons, all of which are quite different from the feds.

And so this book is more for people who are curious about what life’s like—the routines (“prison is a mix of mind-numbingly repetitive routine and sudden flashes of violence and chaos”), the myths versus reality (you’ll be fine if you drop the soap), the violence (Nelson suggests, and I agree, that you identify the power players, show respect, mind your business), the pastimes (Nelson offers a tutorial on how to play card games like pinochle and spades), the economy (Nelson shares instructions on how to make a tattoo gun and a batch of a prison hooch)—for someone, day to day, in prison.

There are sections on serious and sexy and sad topics — preserving mental health, conjugal visits (in a section they label “Fucking in Prison”), and maintaining family relationships—but there are no real stakes to it all. It’s a guide, not a story. I get it, but I wanted to read once in a while about real people in prison. (Shameless plug: If you want to read a reported narrative about what it’s like to be suffering from schizoaffective disorder in Attica, read “This Place is Crazy”; if you want to experience what it’s like to go on conjugals in Sing Sing, read “Sex, Love, and Marriage Behind Bars”; if you want to know what if feels like to watch your mother die slowly while you’re in prison, read “Happy Mother’s Day, from Prison.”) I have no doubt Nelson met countless colorful characters behind bars, but aside from a few anecdotes, he doesn’t draw on them. I wonder if Nelson—with a nudge from Sheridan, whose narrative chops are matchless—could’ve brought to life some flesh-and-blood characters when describing the dos and don’ts.

How to Not Die in Prison: A Survival Guide

As for the writing, it can be crude and corny: “To help save you from eating your cellie’s pillow, we are providing a glossary of terms to help navigate your new home.” The idea that any misstep will lead to someone fucking you in the ass is a tired trope. In 25 years in max-security joints, and really a whole life in lockup, I’ve never witnessed rape like this. To be fair, most New York prisons have single-man cells, and there is a different, predatory dynamic that can unfold out of view in double-bunk cells like they have in California, where Nelson did his time.

I did appreciate that they sprinkled in a bunch of accurate stats about what it’s like to live in the American prison. As I prepare for another summer of pain in Sing Sing, it was chilling to read these about the heat: “A lack of air-conditioning caused the deaths of close to three hundred prisoners in Texas prisons alone between 2001 and 2019, and rising temperatures are tolerated even less well in states where prisoners aren’t accustomed to heat,” Nelson writes. “In states in the northeast, prisoner deaths following heat waves rose by a whopping 21 percent over that same eighteen-year period.”

Nelson includes another jarring and depressing stat from the American Journal of Public Health, which suggests that “every year spent behind bars reduces your life expectancy by two years.” At forty-nine, having spent the past twenty-five years inside, I suppose I should be lucky that I haven’t yet died in prison.