Landman creator Taylor Sheridan got brutally honest about how some story lines were created out of spite.
During a recent episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” show, Sheridan, 56, recalled sidelining Demi Moore in season 1 on purpose, adding, “I told her, when I met with Demi about that, I said, ‘Look, here’s the thing. You’re gonna be an extra in this show. For seven episodes, you’re going to be an extra, and the critics are going to come after me.’”
Sheridan wanted to stir up drama with his decision.
“‘I’m ‘underutilizing this [actress], can’t write for women,’ all this nonsense.’ And then I’m going to kill your husband, and you’re going to have to run the oil company,’” he recalled telling Moore about her real arc on the show.
The shakeup was important to Sheridan, especially if he was to achieve his initial goal.
“The critics and me, I don’t care what they think, and it annoys the s**t out of them that I don’t care,” he added. “And I’ll be the first to tell you that there are things that I do that rage-bait them a bit, and this is one of them.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Sheridan recalled how he withheld screeners for key episodes that addressed Moore’s larger role as Cami, “because f**k them, honestly.”
“I knew that when we put it all on [Demi]’s shoulders, from an audience standpoint, you’ve just seen her in little snippets as the housewife, in the background, living this fantasy. So, we’ve set her up by omission to be someone that the audience is predisposed to believe she can’t be this capable of doing this job,” he continued. “And not only does she have to overcome every character in this world’s opinion of her, but now she has to overcome the audience’s predetermined opinion of her. And I let her do that in the first scene of season 2.”
Sheridan also pointed to Ainsley’s (Michelle Randolph) tension with her nonbinary college roommate, Paigyn (Bobby Salvor Menuez), as a story line intended to provoke conversations off screen about his intentions.
“Paigyn, the roommate, [was] one of the few times the network and even some of the actors called me and said, ‘You sure you don’t want to compress the resolution of Paigyn and Ainsley? What you do at episode 10, when they become friends … You don’t want to put that in episode 9?’” he recalled. “I said, ‘No, for exactly the reason you’re asking. I want to piss you off a little, and then, how dare I? and then you watch the next week and go, ‘Oh you got me.’”
Based on the “Boomtown” podcast, Landman is Sheridan’s latest hit series, joining the ranks of Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lawmen: Bass Reeves and Lioness. The hit Paramount+ series introduced Billy Bob Thornton as a corporate fixer working for an oil titan in a West Texas-set drama with life-and-death stakes.
Ali Larter, meanwhile, plays Tommy’s (Thornton) wife alongside their onscreen daughter Ainsley (Randolph). Before filming began on season 3, Larter, 50, praised how Sheridan has written female characters on his shows.
“I love that he creates dynamic and powerful women,” she told Us Weekly earlier this month.
Larter was excited to see what Sheridan created for her character, Angela, in season 3, adding, “With someone like Angela, she’s someone who loves her family, loves to have a good time and she has this big, huge heart.”
She continued, “For me, it’s been a dream getting to play her. I never know what’s going to come out of her mouth — but we figure it out on set — and it’s always a joy and a blast to play her.”
Landman is currently streaming on Paramount+
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