You’d think that at 79, Sylvester Stallone may be ready to call it quits. But bring up retirement with the actor, and it’s clear there’s still plenty of fight left in him. “Forget it,” he tells Yahoo. “Because I don't know the concept of retiring. I thought I did. Wouldn’t it be great to mow your lawn every day and chase bees off the roses or whatever you do? And I go, 'No.' I'm just not — I'm built for war. You know what I mean? Creative war.” Nearly an octogenarian, Stallone is still notching career milestones, including on Tulsa King, which is his first leading role in a scripted TV series. Now entering its third season on Sunday, the hit show blends mob drama with offbeat humor and gives Stallone a chance to showcase his signature blend of grit and charm. But for the actor, it’s the role’s unexpected vulnerability that keeps him coming back. In Tulsa King, part of Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling slate on Paramount+, Stallone plays Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a New York mob capo who, after spending 25 years in prison, is unceremoniously sent to Tulsa, Okla., to establish new territory for the family. “The series has been very inventive,” he says. “I said, look, these other gangster [stories] — Sopranos, Goodfellas — they’ve done it perfectly. But no one has really had this dark humor, this oddball kind of twist, but also a guy who can be pathological when he has to.” Dwight is old-school and unpredictable. He’s a man capable of violence, yet driven by loyalty. He’s rebuilding his empire while trying to reconnect with a daughter who barely knows him. And perhaps most interesting of all, he’s a character Stallone says is the closest version of himself he’s ever played. “Truthfully, it's who I am,” he says, explaining he wanted to “experiment” with this series. “Why don’t I just pretend I woke up one morning and I'm not an actor, I'm not a writer — I’m now a full-blooded gangster. You still have your personality, but you're a gangster. You don’t write screenplays. You blow people away if necessary, that’s it.” Stallone, being Stallone, brings levity even to the darkest corners of Dwight’s world. “I'm always fooling around. It’s very hard for me to be serious [for] more than 10 minutes,” he says. “That’s why I was thrown out of 12 schools in 13 years. I’m like the village dunce. But finally, it paid off.” It’s in the emotional moments, particularly when Dwight taps into his softer side as father or grandfather, where Tulsa King really lands. “Oh, God, yeah,” Stallone says when I ask if those scenes hit differently as a father in real life. “Because that's when the audience relates. They say, ‘Ah, I got that going on right on the couch next to me. I understand that problem. I understand that sense of joy.’” The family thread is more than just acting for Stallone. “I pay very, very close attention to my family now — my wife [especially],” he says. Stallone and wife Jennifer Flavin have been together more than 30 years, despite a brief hiatus in 2022. They share daughters Sophia, 29, Sistine, 27 and Scarlet, 23. “So when [our family’s] working together, it’s a kind of a very happy, generative emotion, because you’re with your people…It just energizes the hell out of me.” That sense of presence — of valuing who and what’s in front of him — is something he’s also tried to pass along to the Tulsa King cast, many of whom have called him a mentor. It’s a title he wears proudly, especially since no one filled that role for him when he was starting out.