‘Tulsa King’ co-star on working with Stallone: ​​’Great and terrifying’

Andrea Savage transitions from her signature comedic role to a dramatic one “Tulsa King.”

“For me it’s definitely going on the palm tree” brutally49, told The Post about her role as tormented ATF agent Stacy Beale in the Taylor Sheridan (“Yellowstone”) created Paramount+ series, starring Sylvester Stallone (in his TV debut) as New York mobster Dwight “The General.” Manfredi, who is sent to Oklahoma City by his bosses to exploit the city’s untapped (and lucrative) underworld market.

“I was really looking [a dramatic part] and I kind of carried that out into the world,” Savage said. “I wanted to do something that scared me and that would feel like something exciting and new… and when Taylor Sheridan, Terence Winter and Sylvester Stallone come your way, don’t ask for a lot of followers. I just thought, ‘Sure. Oklahoma? For six months? Count me in.'”

The timing worked for Savage (Hulus The Hotwives parody, Veep) as her truTV comedy series I’m Sorry was abruptly canceled after being renewed for a third season. “We were in the middle of filming [Season 3], then we were shut down during COVID and then we went into a merger,” she said. “I didn’t think I was ready to get on another comedy show.”

Savage said it was Winter, the Tulsa King showrunner (and one of his executive producers) who recruited her for the role.

“[Winter] liked to use people with comedic backgrounds on his projects, from Steve Buscemi (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) and Ray Romano (Vinyl), so he thought of me and, I “I’ll be honest, he had to convince some people,” she said. “It wasn’t a direct hit. It was a long process and went back and forth. I ended up reading [for the role]. A project like this involved a lot of people and had to make decisions.

“I had to fight for this one.”

After Savage won the casting battle, it was time to meet Stallone on the Tulsa King set while he was filming a scene [in Episode 1] in which 75-year-old Dwight meets Stacy at a strip club (they end up in a sack).

“It was awesome and it was scary, it’s my favorite place,” she said. “I’m sitting in Oklahoma looking over at Sylvester Stallone and I’m like, ‘My life has taken such an amazing, weird left turn. How did I get here?’

“The ice was broken [with Stallone] relatively quickly,” she says. “I’ll be honest; I was very intimidated on day one. We had never met before until we had to do that scene where [Stacy] somehow approaches him at the strip club. But he was incredible. He’s just larger than life. I know it’s a cliché people throw around, but it really is. We started going through scenes and he was using his arms all the time and gesturing in the scene and I was like, ‘Oh you do a lot of things with your hands’ and that made him laugh.

“He said, ‘Oh, you’re funny’ and we went to the races. He’s good at making people feel more comfortable around him because I think he knows he’s intimidating and he loves comedy – so I think I was a bit ‘in’ in that regard .”

The 10-episode series premiered on November 13, with new episodes being released every Sunday (paramountplus.qflm.net/9WG5D0) (paramountplus.qflm.net/9WG5D0). Savage can’t reveal too much about how the rest of Season 1 will unfold for Stacy, but she did share a few tidbits.

“I don’t think any of us knew how much comedy was going to be [in the series] but I think Sly really leans toward comedy,” she said. “It’s going to be more dramatic, at least for Stacy. There will be comedic fish-out-of-water moments, but Stacy doesn’t laugh much.

“She’s an ATF agent and she knows what she has to do, but I have to say that intention and execution often misalign, especially when you’re lonely,” she said. “As time goes on, we’ll find out more about why she’s in Oklahoma. She’s had a tough road and she’s been battling a lot of demons… and part of the show is about characters judging where they are in their lives.

“She’s going through it, just like Dwight,” she said. “She’s a little bit in crisis mode, a woman in her 40s who’s kind of lost, a little bit of a drinker, has some PTSD.

“She should probably see her therapist a lot more often than she does.”