Kim Coates Makes American Primeval‘s Brigham Young Into a Chilling Western Villain

2025’s FIRST PIECE of major historical fiction has landed, and it’s Netflix’s brutally violent and often-engrossing Western limited series, American Primeval. Set in 1857 Utah—where settlers, groups of indigenous people, and the outwardly-expanding Mormon church are almost constantly at violent odds—the show is an entertaining but often punishing watch.

It centers not on one single story, but rather a number of threads in its expansive story. And while most of our main characters, like Taylor Kitsch’s Isaac and Betty Gilpin’s Sara, are fictional creations for the show, others, like Shea Whigham‘s Jim Bridger and Kim Coates’s Brigham Young, are very real figures in American history and the West.

One of the main threads and depictions in American Primeval is how the Mormons—the early Church of Latter Day Saints—are expanding their grasp on Utah at any cost. In the very first episode, that is realized in the form of the excruciatingly bloody Mountain Meadows Massacre, a real event that the Church of Latter Day Saints has in the time since accepted responsibility for; we see murders, scalpings, and all sorts of horrible violence in this grueling long scene that sets the tone for the remainder of the limited series.

American Primeval early on establishes the Mormons as the show’s relentless antagonists, but it’s only once Brigham Young is properly introduced, as both their political and religious leader, that the threat feels even more real. Young is a gifted orator, a calm speaker whose words actually suggest a violent, terrifying future of violence and brutality at the benefit of his church and to the detriment of everyone in their path.

Young is seen often in the show speechifying to his followers, but it’s his scenes opposite Bridger that really pop; a man who has clearly used his gift of gab to get as far as he has in life (and, in 1857, it’s pretty damn far), coming up against another man who’s built everything around him from scratch. It’s an uneasy match, and both actors—Whigham and Coates—play the interactions perfectly.

But there’s a lot to know about Young, American Primeval, and the portrayal. Keep reading and we’ll fill you in.

Stream American Primeval Here

Kim Coates plays Brigham Young in Netflix’s American Primeval

Brigham Young is played by actor Kim Coates in Netflix’s American Primeval.

The 66-year-old character actor dove head first into the role, according to an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, reading a pair of biographies—Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet and The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane—on the man who was the first Governor of the Utah territory, in addition to reading The Twenty-Seventh Wife (the story of Young’s wife who divorced him) and speaking to two longtime members of the Mormon church who he’s connected to in his own life.

Coates told Tudum that he doesn’t consider his version of Young to particularly be a hero or a villain. “As an actor, you have to make choices,” he said. “Things start at the top and filter down, and we mustn’t shy away from both the nastiness and the goodness in our history. And this particular story has some of both, and it has some lessons that we can and should learn from. But boy, it was tough to survive in 1857. I don’t know how anyone did.”

Peter Berg, who directed the series, told Tudum that Coates was constantly in character while making the show.

“I don’t think I ever talked to Kim Coates as Kim Coates,” Berg said. “It was only as Brigham Young the entire shoot. He’d come to set in that hair and the makeup and clothing and the attitude, and I would call him Governor Young. He would just stay in character all day.”

Coates is well known for his roles in film, on TV, and on the stage

In addition to his role in American Primeval, Coates has amassed a career with more than 150 television and film credits, according to his IMDb page.

He’s probably best known for his role on FX’s Sons of Anarchy, where he played Tig Trager on all 92 episodes of the show’s run (a role he reprised in an episode of the show’s spinoff, Mayans M.C.). He also played a key role in another Netflix Western limited series, Godless, where he appeared alongside Jeff Daniels, Merritt Weaver, and others; in 2023, he appeared in HBO’s limited series The White House Plumbers.

Coates has worked with lots of great directors on the big screen as well; one of his earliest roles was in Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout, while he’s also appeared in Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, and Ridley Scott‘s Black Hawk Down. He worked with Kevin Costner on both Waterworld and Open Range.

More recently, he’s well known for his role alongside Seann William Scott in the hockey comedy Goon and its sequel, Goon: Last of the Enforcers.