Yellowstone star Luke Grimes celebrated New Year’s Eve by sharing his first-ever Instagram photo of his newborn son.
Luke, 40, welcomed his little bundle of joy in October with his wife, the 28-year-old Brazilian-born model Bianca Rodrigues Grimes.
Bianca has shared photos of the baby before, including in his birth announcement on October 9, which was an Instagram snap of her cradling him in her arms along with the caption: ‘Welcome to the world little man.’
Now Luke has shared his own first Instagram snap of the infant, who was seen nestled in his mother’s arms as the actor leaned down to gaze lovingly at him.
In his caption marking the impending arrival of 2025, he wrote: ‘2024 was the greatest year of my life. Here is the proof.’
The picture was taken backstage at Nashville’s iconic country venue the Grand Ole Opry, where Luke – who is also a singer-songwriter – made his debut in November.
Luke and Bianca have been married in 2018, and although they rarely discuss their private lives in public, he showered praise on her in a 2023 interview.
‘I just wanted to make it very clear. I’m a very married person and I love my wife to death. We’ll be together forever,’ he gushed to USA Today.
He shared that Bianca calls him ‘anjo,’ which is the word for ‘angel’ in her native Portuguese, but he added: ‘There’s no way I earn it. I do my best. But I’m a flawed big ol’ weird-a** man. She’s the real angel here.’
His new post about his baby comes weeks after his former Yellowstone co-star Kevin Costner shot down a question on his rumored feud with Grimes.
The iconic actor, 69, who exited the acclaimed series amid a rift with showrunner Taylor Sheridan, stepped out in Aspen just days after the finale aired, and weeks after his character John Dutton was killed off in a faked suicide.
In an exclusive video obtained by DailyMail.com the Oscar winner said: ‘I’m not thinking about [the Yellowstone finale], I don’t think I’ve given it any thoughts, we’ll just let it go.’
He also shut down a question about his alleged feud with onscreen son and Kayce Dutton actor Grimes, and revealed he hadn’t been in contact with him since the finale aired.
In the show, Kevin’s character John was unexpectedly killed in a murder-for-hire plot during the premiere of Yellowstone’s season five part two.
He was killed in the first few minutes of the premiere, with the show wasting no time revealing he had passed by suicide by gunshot – after Kevin acrimoniously exited the show over scheduling conflicts with his Western movie franchise Horizon.
Since the show ended Grimes has waxed lyrical about the changes Costner’s departure made to the filming process.
Last week, Luke revealed that filming without the two-time Oscar winner made things much smoother f or him and the rest of the cast.
‘Hopefully everyone can see that it was time,’ Luke said of Kevin departing from the neo-Western drama. ‘To be really honest, there was a part of Kevin being gone that meant some of the conflict was gone.’
He continued: ‘Obviously, it didn’t make it super fun to be around… Not pointing any fingers, but it was actually the easiest season we’ve filmed.’
He was later asked by Men’s Health if they are still in contact, to which he said: ‘No, I haven’t talked to him since. It’s not a case of any hard feelings or anything; its just, he’s Kevin Costner,’ he said with a laugh.
‘He’s a big deal. I do have his phone number – I just don’t feel like it’s my place to reach out. He can reach out to me if he wants,’ Luke continued.
Luke added to Men’s Health that ‘none of us saw it coming the way it did, and obviously there was news about possible blowups behind the scenes or whatever. But just like in life, man, these things happen, they happen fast, and they’re not predictable.’
Adding: ‘I lost my father a few years ago. It happened fast, and it was not the way that you would think that that would happen. In life, these things happen and then people have to start making decisions.’
Luke noted: ‘And in our little Yellowstone world, that helped ramp the show up into a boil.’
Previously, Luke reminded viewers that it was ‘always the plan’ to have John die.
‘It was always the plan for him to have to go away for the story to really ramp up, and that was the story. You lose a patriarch of the family. Can the kids do it on their own?’ he told People.
He admitted, ‘there’s been some negative reactions’ to Dutton’s death, which was first revealed as a suicide – which most fans didn’t agree with – and later revealed as a hit performed by a company specializing in making homicides look like deaths by other means, namely accidents or suicides.
‘I think they feel sort of cheated. And what I would say to that is, I think we were all lucky to have Kevin on the show as long as we did,’ Luke said.
He also added that the original plan was to kill off John Dutton much earlier in the story.
‘I think originally he was supposed to die much earlier. So, in a way, they got way more of John Dutton than they were going to originally get. I would keep that in mind,’ Luke added.
‘If it happened in such a shocking, quick way, that’s how life works, right? I mean, when you lose people, it’s sometimes not how you planned and not when you think it’s going to be,’ he continued.
Kevin revealed in June that when he was pitched the show by Sheridan, his character was only going to be around for one season.
‘When it was first pitched to me by Taylor [Sheridan] it was one season and [like] a long movie, which [is] speaking my language… but ultimately, I think what happened was the studio didn’t want that,’ Costner said.
‘And because he’s such a prolific writer, he said, “I can do that. I can make a series that goes on,”‘ Kevin added.
He ultimately ‘stepped up’ and agreed to, ‘do it for three seasons, and I ended up doing it for five.’
He also went on to praise Sheridan, stating, ‘I liked the writing and really, really liked what Taylor was doing.’
‘He understood the world of modern-day ranching and was able to create all this other type of drama inside it, but in an effective way,’ Costner added.