Yellowstone star Cole Hauser has confessed he was initially shocked

when women told him how much they ‘love’ his ‘bad boy’ character Rip Wheeler.

The smash hit series follows a family of ranchers in Montana, headed by Kevin Costner’s

patriarch character John Dutton. Rip is a ranch hand who rises to become John’s thug enforcer – and who commits multiple murders in the course of his work.

When the show began, its female fans took an instant liking to Rip, which Cole said ‘surprised the s***’ out of him and the show’s co-creator Taylor Sheridan.

‘At first, to see women coming up and saying: “Oh my God, I love your character.” I was thinking: “What’s wrong with you?”‘ Cole, 49, joked to People.

As the show progresses, Rip strikes up a romance with John’s daughter Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly), and the two eventually get married.

Over the years that the show has ‘grown,’ Cole has come to understand why the fans developed such an affinity for his character.

He was able to ‘see the bad boy kind of thing that they love,’ and to appreciate the fact that Rip ‘has an unbelievable heart too.’

Cole explained: ‘I mean, his loyalty is to not only the Dutton family, but to Beth [Dutton (Kelly Reilly)] and his kindness, other than wanting to kill people times, is just, to me, it’s the best of both worlds to be able to play.’

He added: ‘You look for colors in characters, and Taylor, in the last five seasons, has given Rip those wonderful colors.’

Cole reflected that he has played a number of ‘bad guys’ during his career, and that the thread connecting them is that they ‘don’t really play themselves as bad guys.’

To Cole, ‘the scariest part’ of Rip is that he is ‘like normal people,’ which makes it all the more unsettling that ‘he is just that kind of animal’ with homicidal tendencies.

Yellowstone is currently in production on the second part of its fifth and final season – after multiple delays to the shoot.

Filming had to be postponed first because of a scheduling dispute with Kevin Costner, and then because of last year’s Hollywood strikes.

Now a cloud of uncertainty is hanging over the question of whether Kevin will be able to return for the second half of season five.

‘I’d like to be able to do it but we haven’t been able to….I thought I was going to make seven [seasons] but right now we’re at five,’ he said earlier this month.

He told Entertainment Tonight: ‘So how it works out – I hope it does – but they’ve got a lot of different shows going on. Maybe it will. Maybe this will circle back to me. If it does and I feel really comfortable with [it], I’d love to do it.’

The scheduling conflict occurred because Kevin wanted to devote his time to his movie Horizon, a western he has spent decades trying to make.