Gretchen Mol has joined Tulsa King Square One in Season 4 as Lt. Gov. Amanda Clark, and the new role puts her straight into conflict with Dwight "The General" Manfredi. She said the part did not come together until now, even though the show first entered her orbit during COVID.
That timing matters because Season 4 Episode 4 is new on Paramount+ on Friday, giving viewers another look at the character Mol says was built to be an antagonist. Amanda Clark is not arriving as background decoration. She is written to challenge Dwight’s world from the moment she appears.
Mol said the path to Tulsa King ran through familiar ground. She had already worked with Terence Winter on Boardwalk Empire and with Taylor Sheridan on Yellowstone, and she said she was excited by the promise of the writing. "You know when you're going in with a writer like Terry that it's just going to be great and you're going to have delicious material," she said, adding that she had watched the first three seasons and found them entertaining and funny.
The role also carried a personal wrinkle. Mol and Sylvester Stallone had crossed paths before through Get Carter in 2000, and she said Stallone worried she might be too sweet for Amanda. Mol pushed back on that idea, saying the character is a brutal antagonist and joking that he should check her work in Boardwalk Empire. The exchange gets at the part’s appeal: Amanda is supposed to look polished, then move hard against Dwight.
That opposition lands in a season already rearranging the board around him. Cal Thresher becomes the newly elected Oklahoma Gov. in the first episode of Tulsa King Season 4 and lets Dwight’s business practices continue without heavy government oversight because of his own history with Dwight. By the end of the premiere, Cal and Margaret Devereaux are dead in a plane crash, and the balance shifts again. Amanda Clark steps into that opening, and by Episode 4 she is already pushing harder.
Mol said the producers were looking for a little bit of an antagonist, and she fit the brief once the timing finally lined up. The open question now is how far Amanda goes as the season moves on. If Episode 4 is the point where she turns more vindictive, the rest of Tulsa King Season 4 may be about whether Dwight can keep his empire standing while a new enemy learns exactly where to hit it.
