SAYING THE NAME “MAEYAERT” IS EASY FOR SOUTHWEST MINNESOTANS, but spelling it can be a challenge, even for hardiest of locals. In California, it’s even more work.
And that is why the former Todd Maeyaert, with hopes of making it big in L.A., changed his name to Atticus Todd.
“When my agent and I were having my first session, he’s looking at my paperwork and asked, ‘Your first name is Atticus? Why in the hell are you not using that?’ Todd said. “He said, ‘We’re dropping that. Nobody can say Maeyaert, nobody can spell Maeyaert, nobody can remember it. We’re going with Atticus Todd, that’s your stage name.”
Todd’s name is legally registered with the Screen Actors Guild as Atticus Todd Dominic Maeyaert. Around here, he’s known and remembered fondly as Todd Maeyaert.
Todd, who now lives in Culver City, CA, just outside of L.A., was in the band at THS and played football as well, but made a local name for himself on the wrestling mat.
Coming out of high school in Tracy in 1985, Todd had an inkling that he wanted to be an actor, but didn’t pursue it because he didn’t believe he had the right connections to make it happen.
“And I kind of thought the people in theater were a bunch of nerds,” he said with a sneaky chuckle. “I also didn’t pursue theater in college.”
Besides wrestling under former Scrappers coach Tom Kuisle, Todd had a passion for the the martial arts as a young lad — one that never really faded. He studied Tae Kwon Do and boxing
‘
She’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re hired. It was for a McDonald’s commercial. And I saw myself on television for this commerical, thinking, ‘regular people can actually do this!’
— ATTICUS TODD (FORMERLY TODD MAEYAERT) after wrestling in college at the University of Minnesota in Morris and while studying Shaotokan. He focused most of his attention on the martial arts after college.
“I went to so many different schools, you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “My first martial arts was Gold Gloves boxing and wrestling. The way that you learn those, you drill techniques with another guy, then you spar. We did forms, but I could never get into forms.”
• Todd’s nomadic martial arts travels — which ended in him finding his place at the Minnesota Kali Group in Minneapolis — was of his own doing, he said. But bouncing from place to place ironically is how he got noticed by a talent scout.
It was while he was training at the Kali Group that a talent scout approached him, saying she was looking for “really big guys who could move,” Todd said. As a lark, Todd, then weighing in at a good 300 pounds, did a cartwheel round-off across the room.
“She’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re hired,’” Todd remembers. “It was for a McDonald’s commercial. And I saw myself on television for this commercial, thinking, ‘regular people can actually do this!’” Todd then trained for a year with a private instructor, then found a school in Minneapolis at which to train before stumbling upon an acting completion in Los Angeles.
“I did really well … and the judges were all agents,” he said. “I got hit up by about 20 of them. They said they could work with me, just not in Minneapolis — you have to be in L.A. if we do this.”
His bags were packed almost immediately, and he never looked back.
After a challenging first year on the West Coast that included living in his car, Todd built a career with guest roles across major television series such as The Shield, ER, Malcolm in the Middle, Nip/Tuck, The Mentalist, Law & Order: Los Angeles, Big Love, Bosch, Criminal Minds, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Hawaii Five-0, and Stumptown, alongside film appearances in S.W.A.T. and Crank: High Voltage.
Todd underwent a significant physical transformation, dropping from 450 to 250 pounds, which shifted the types of roles available to him and gave him the chance to portray Indigenous characters.
And that was his role on Yellowstone, a wildly-popular western drama that blends family drama with Western themes. It premiered in the summer of 2018 and ended 53 episodes later in December 2024.
His recurring role as Yellowstone’s Ben Waters — the captain of the reservation police on the fictional Broken Rock reservation who sometimes operates in morally complex ways — has stood out as a career highlight, representing authentic Native casting that he advocates strongly for. Todd was part of the cast for the first three seasons of Yellowstone.
“ Yellowstone was the one that I had the greatest opportunities with,” Todd said. “If Covid hadn’t hit, I think I would’ve made season regular.”
For anyone familiar with Yellowstone, the lead role is played by one Kevin Costner, who Todd got to know right off the bat.
“I met him my first day, and we had a scene together my first day,” Todd said.
Because he previously had met and interacted with a number of Hollywood celebrities, Todd said he was not starstruck when he met Costner.
“By that time, I had met so many celebrities … he actually came up to me and introduced himself; he said, ‘Hi, I’m Kevin,’” Todd said. “I smiled and said, ‘Yes, I know, I’m Atticus.’ We stood and chatted for about 10 minutes, then we went and got a cup of coffee.”
Todd, who is of Anishinaabe descent, has long insisted that Native actors like himself should play Native roles while supporting their right to portray other ethnicities. He has also spoken publicly on issues like violence against Native women and expresses cautious optimism about growing opportunities for Indigenous representation in entertainment.
“I have found that historically for me, my heritage never did anything for me,” Todd said. “I booked more roles that were not my heritage than were. I played Chinese, Hawaiian, Russian, Italian (characters). They could never quite place me. They said, ‘What are you?’ I said, ‘Whatever you need me to be!’” It wasn’t until he started losing weight that he started landing more Nativespecific roles like the one in Yellowstone.
“They just couldn’t see me as Indian because I was so big,” he said. “I looked much more Samoan or Hawaiian.”
• Today, Todd isn’t concerned with landing roles as much as he is with getting healthy. That journey started when he made the decision to change his lifestyle. Todd said through his relationship with close friend and fellow actor Travis McKenna (think overweight bad guy in the movie Roadhouse), he internally came to the conclusion that a change was needed. McKenna got sick and ended up in a diabetic coma — he was 500 pounds at the time, Todd 450.
At that time, Todd said he allowed himself to eat as much as we wanted, and those cravings got the best of him.
“I’m looking at him and thinking, ‘Fifty pounds from now, that’s me,’” Todd said. “I knew I needed to change this. I created a diet for myself that was pretty effective.”
Todd said he dropped a couple pounds every week and averaged shedding 50 pounds a year for four years, getting down to 250 pounds.
“It’s not just a diet, it’s gotta be a change in lifestyle,” Todd said. “You’ve just got to accept a new lifestyle, and it’s super easy.”
But weight loss notwithstanding, Todd is currently dealing with diabetes — he admits he avoided doctors for some three decades. Today, he is bed-ridden. He has a hyper-active colon, which has resulted in serious dehydration issues and has destroyed his kidneys — he is dealing with full renal failure. He has also undergone angioplasty on his arms.
At his low point, Todd’s gall bladder, he said, was filled with so many stones that a UCLA surgeon told him he had never seen as many stones before.
“I will be able to get back out of it, I know I can,” he said, his voice dripping with determination. “But it’s my fault I got to this point.”
Todd admits though that at times, his condition gets the best of him mentally, which is why he reached out to his good friend, Jeff Towne, for support. Towne has reciprocated by traveling out to California.
“I needed someone to talk to,” Todd said. “There’s a connection there.”
• When looking back on his high school days and those who influenced him in a positive way, the names Jesse James, and Kuisle and Jim Trulock — the latter two, both wrestling coaches —come to Todd’s mind.
“Wrestling was a big part of who I was,” Todd said. “I would even say it was my identity. Ken Witt also had a big impact on me, and biology teacher, Russ Stobb. I was really into science, so I did a lot of studying with those guys.”
