Note: This story contains spoilers from “Landman” Season 2, Episode 1.
Taylor Sheridan’s “Landman” is back.
Almost exactly a year after the first season premiered, the series set in the Texas oil industry returned Sunday to Paramount+. After a very dramatic first season finale, Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris is now the president of fictional company M-Tex Oil. And while his business life is definitely getting more complicated, so is his home life. Not only is his daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) going to college, but his relationship with his on-again/off-again wife Angela (Ali Larter) is just as tempestuous as ever. Adding to that is the fact that his father (Sam Elliott) is coming to live with him.
TheWrap spoke to Thornton and Elliott about what we can expect from Season 2, including why Elliott, a Sheridan veteran from “1883,” joined the blockbuster series.
TheWrap: Sam, tell us about joining “Landman.” Did Billy Bob rope you in?
Sam Elliott: I wasn’t roped into it by anybody. I’d worked for Taylor before on another show. And it’s another time and another opportunity to just continue on with him. It’s one of the great gifts I’ve had in my career and I’ve been very fortunate in my career. But I don’t think anything better has come along than “1883” and now this thing. It’s just a joy to go to work, and the opportunity to work with this guy sitting next to me, it doesn’t get any better than this.
What can you tease about the relationship between your characters this season?
Billy Bob Thornton: Sam puts it best, we start the season when Pop comes home, with a very fractured relationship. It’s just a process of what we go through to try to mend it … or whatever happens.
Because Tommy needs more guff at home.
Billy Bob Thornton: He gets enough. It’s 24-hours-a-day for Tommy. There’s no whistle blowing at the end of the day.
Sam is it fun to get in and mix it up?
Sam Elliott: It’s an incredible cast. It’s nothing but fun. To put it mildly, I get to go from like a-to-z somehow on this thing. It started out in this really dark place. And by the time Season 2 is over, he’s on his way to being healed. He’s still in a hole and I never get out of it, and it’s a real emotional dark spot for most of the trip for this character this season, but to get to play it out with Billy and the rest of the cast is really special.
Do you get to say some oil man jargon? Billy Bob is so good at that stuff.
Sam Elliott: I haven’t done much of that. I think TL was, in fact, he was a wildcatter back in the day. Maybe he was just a guy operating a rig. I don’t know. We haven’t gotten in that deep in terms of his background, other than the fact that he, in fact, was in the oil business on some level, on the working end of it back in the day.
But you do get that great speech about the sunset.
Sam Elliott: He’s an outdoor guy, and that spoke to me when this thing came around. When our audience responds to that kind of material in a scene is because of the story that [Taylor] is telling. It just speaks to what a great writer Taylor is. It’s such a gift to have that material and to be able to deal with Billy.
Tommy has got so much to clean up this season — at home and at work.
Billy Bob Thornton: Yeah, well, that’s what actors dream of — if an actor doesn’t have some kind of mess to clean up, it can get old pretty quick. But yeah, I’m looking very forward to seeing what the audience feels. And like Sam was saying earlier, we’re just like the audience is, looking forward to watching this season. We’re looking forward to making Season 3 too.
Billy, you’re ready to go 10 more seasons.
Billy Bob Thornton: We all are.
“Landman” releases new episodes Sundays on Paramount+.
The post Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott on Teaming Up for ‘Landman’ Season 2: ‘It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This’ appeared first on TheWrap.
