Mo Brings Plenty does way more than just ride horses in Yellowstone and Marshals.

An underrated legacy of Yellowstone’s mark on television is Taylor Sheridan’s approach to Indigenous storytelling, from casting Native American actors to handling scenes with sensitivity. But Sheridan didn’t do it alone. Enter Mo Brings Plenty, an actor, stuntman, musician and former model, who has been a fan favorite staple of Yellowstone as Mo — the wise, steely and sometimes menacing right-hand man to tribal chairman Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham). Brings Plenty took on the double duty of consulting on matters related to Native accuracy and spiritual respect as the show’s American Indian affairs coordinator. Now he’s carrying on this legacy into the new CBS spin-off Marshals, created by Spencer Hudnut.

For Brings Plenty, filming the Marshals debut season is “like being back home.” His character, Mo, is among the handful of key players who have crossed over to the new series alongside lead Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) and Rainwater in a series with a more procedural approach than its predecessor and centering on a specialized U.S. Marshals task force.

You might also recognize the return of Mo’s jet-black horse, Zorro. Brings Plenty’s trusted companion from Yellowstone lives at his home ranch in Kansas. The actor has been riding horses as long as he can remember, a skill that came in handy when he started auditioning for roles and doing stunt work. “The fact that I could handle horses started giving me the opportunity to start doing some acting on horseback,” he tells Yahoo over Zoom as he reminisces about the early days of his acting career. “And then other avenues began to open up.”

The actor’s first acting credit goes back to 2007, a single episode in the BBC documentary series The Wild West, playing Lakota leader Crazy Horse in a re-creation of 1876’s Battle of the Little Bighorn. Since then, Brings Plenty has appeared in House of Cards, has done stunt work for The Revenant and was a cast regular on the Showtime miniseries The Good Lord Bird, among other projects. In 2018, he was cast in Yellowstone as Rainwater’s driver, bodyguard and, eventually, lethal right-hand man, always in a cowboy hat and his signature double braid.

Looking back on the legacy of Yellowstone, the 56-year-old Oglala Lakota actor thinks first of the storylines. “To bring light to a lot of the things that Indian country faces and that we’re still dealing with … it takes great courage to be able to bring those to the forefront,” he says. “Not just that, but also the fact that a lot of our traditional identity still exists.”

He does more than just embody a supporting character: Brings Plenty’s role as American Indian affairs coordinator is multifaceted. To him the role isn’t dissimilar to the duties of a stunt coordinator but on matters of accurate and thoughtful Indigenous representation. “I know things that you can't Google, and I also know where that fine line is to be able to keep it respectful to the individuals who made the sacrifices to keep our languages and our ceremonies alive,” he says. “It's an undiscovered fountain of youth for stories to be written and told, so there's a lot of opportunity there.” This came up, for example, in Kayce’s vision quest on Yellowstone, a storyline on missing and murdered Indigenous women and, more recently, in culturally sensitive scenes in upcoming episodes of Marshals.

He also consulted on another spinoff, 1923, which includes a storyline on the violence faced by youth stripped from their families and culture at a Catholic American Indian boarding school. Brings Plenty is always ready to pick up the phone and consult, show up at production meetings or remind crew on the set to be mindful of sacred items and scenes during shooting. As far as he can tell, there aren’t many like him; Brings Plenty has yet to meet someone doing similar work — and film and television productions certainly haven’t always gotten representation right. “In the past, it’s always what they thought was appropriate,” he says.

During our call, Brings Plenty reminds me that Native ceremonies were outlawed until 1978, when then-President Jimmy Carter signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act after years of activism for it. “I always want to keep that in mind,” he says. “I know the sacrifices that have been made for all of those things to still be here.” It still took him years to embrace ceremonies as a young man, and Brings Plenty hopes to keep bringing that deep history into his consulting work.

The underrepresentation of Native Americans onscreen actually goes back to the roots of why Brings Plenty began acting in the first place, in the hopes it might inspire young people on reservations. He was especially swayed after hearing from Indigenous youth who weren’t proud of their culture. “Eventually, a grandmother told me: They don’t see themselves on TV; mainstream America doesn’t accept that identity,” he said. “So I thought to myself, How do I change that?”

Along the way, Brings Plenty has tried a few different avenues of artistic expression — like modeling for Ed Hardy and touring as a drummer for Brulé, a Native American new age rock band that has released 22 albums since 1996. The group still tours frequently, minus Brings Plenty.  “It was an outlet for my heart,” he says of his time with the band.

When he’s not ruminating on rejoining the band for a reunion tour someday, Brings Plenty has his hands full at home. In between set days, he identifies as a traditional individual: Brings Plenty attends ceremonies, goes back home to visit his reservation and attends grassroots meetings to stay connected with his community. But he finds balance between it all by riding Zorro and his other horses. “It re-centers me, keeps me focused,” he says.

Looking forward, the actor — whose primary film influences come from the iconic 1990 film Dances With Wolves and the 1970 western A Man Called Horse — hopes to see more American Indian creatives involved behind the camera. But there’s one thing he hopes to manifest himself: playing Jackson Sundown, a Native American rodeo rider and the oldest saddle bronc champion known for his mythic performance at the 1916 Pendleton Round-Up in Oregon. “I think his storyline would be wonderful to tell,” he says.

Until then, there’s lots to look forward to as the fictional Mo continues to evolve in Marshals. “We still have the same spirit of Yellowstone, but in a new show.”