Terence Winter: We filmed in and around Tulsa. Most of the show is filmed in Oklahoma City, which is about 90 minutes away. Oklahoma City has a bigger infrastructure for shooting, it’s got soundstages and things that Tulsa doesn’t have. But we tried to utilize the city as much as possible to capture the vibe and tone of Tulsa. When I was writing my version of the pilot, I spent three days alone in Tulsa. I stayed at The Mayo Hotel where Dwight lives and I walked around everywhere. I’ve been to the Hard Rock Casino, I’ve been to Black Wall Street, and I’ve been to “The Center of the Universe.” All those little places that you see on the show come from my research. Its wide open spaces and blue skies make it a wonderful place to shoot. You take a guy that looks like Sylvester Stallone and drop them into the middle of a horse farm… it gets your attention.

Joshua Encinias: “The Center of the Universe” in Tulsa is this place where no one can hear you speak, so Dwight goes there to confess his sins and express his real feelings. It’s a surreal place where a homeless woman tells him she doesn’t want his “scuzzy money.” It’s got a touch of the coma arc from the Sopranos and other surreal elements of your work. 

Terence Winter: Yeah! I stumbled into that area when I was wandering in Tulsa. I saw a couple of people standing there talking and looked like they were yelling, I couldn’t hear them. I walked up and introduced myself and said, “What is this thing?” and they told me what it was. I thought it was so cool and I tried it myself. Then I thought, “Well, I can make something out of this.” I wasn’t sure what until I wrote the second episode and decided it would be a type of confessional. The homeless woman says to Dwight, “People talk to God in there.” I thought that’s a really sweet idea that this is him confessing and talking to God, apologizing. It was one of those happy accidents that lent itself to the storytelling.

https://www.moviemaker.com/tulsa-king-boss-terence-winter-on-finding-the-real-sylvester-stallone/