Billy Bob Thornton not too long ago did a two-for-one. The actor was in a position to promote his new Paramount+ collection, “Landman,” whereas on tour along with his band, the Boxmasters, in Texas in September. “I did a few things along the road,” he says. “Not many. There were a few phone interviews and then a couple of cities where they had a SAG screening that I would go do a Q&A in the afternoon before the shows.”
Whereas filming, Thornton and his spouse, Connie, rented a home close to Fort Price and loved reconnecting to all issues Texan, because the actor spent a while there earlier than discovering success in Los Angeles. Though he did an entertaining stint as a success man in a “Fargo” arc, “Landman” is the Oscar-winning actor’s first dedication to a collection since “Goliath,” and like his hard-charging lawyer character in that collection, Thornton is as soon as once more portraying a person whose ardour lies deeply in his work. Solely this time, he explains, his character is working for the “corporation” whereas authorized eagle Billy McBride was “taking [the corporation] down.”
Additionally, the chance to work with Taylor Sheridan in a task that was written only for him was too good to go up.
“I did this cameo for Taylor on ‘1883,’” Thornton says. “We started talking, and I liked his directing style. We seem to have a good working relationship. So when they had the premiere for ‘1883’ in Las Vegas, afterward at the dinner, I was sitting next to him and he said, ‘I’m writing a series for you called “Landman,” and I’m going to write down it in your voice. It’s on this planet of the oil enterprise in Texas,’ and he defined the character to me, which was primarily type of me if I had been a land man.
Billy Bob Thornton stars as Tommy Norris in “Landman,” a Taylor Sheridan collection.
(Emerson Miller/Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
“And I was very intrigued. Then once I read the first script or two, it was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is my voice!’ I think I can do this because I like to do parts that I’m right for. I’m not big on playing, like, French guys and stuff. I don’t really want to do an imitation. Having grown up in Arkansas and Texas, I have an affinity for that area and everything, so it just all made sense to me.
“I found out I knew some about the oil business, but I did learn a few more things about it. Then we had Taylor and Christian Wallace, who had the podcast. Christian was there on the set, so if I needed technical information he had it. An actor wants to know what he means when he’s saying it instead of just memorizing lines and spouting them off.”
Wallace, a West Texas native with a grasp’s in writing from the College of Galway in Eire, joined Texas Month-to-month, the Austin-based shiny journal, as a fact-checker in 2016. He wrote seven long-form cowl tales, a number of of which had been shortly picked up by Hollywood manufacturing firms. Whereas some have since been dropped, fast-forward a number of years, and Wallace is now writing “Landman” together with Sheridan. The connection began when Sheridan purchased the rights to Wallace’s profitable podcast “Boomtown,” concerning the large twenty first century oil growth within the West Texas basin.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Occasions)
“And I’m very grateful, because the reason why I’m sitting here talking to you as the co-creator of this show is because Taylor Sheridan made that happen for me. He did not have to bring me along,” Wallace says, noting that the podcast buy might have been the top of it. “Instead, we had conversations for two years about story and character and where we wanted to take this thing. And at one point, he asked me to write a spec script based on our conversations.
“I went off and did that, and he gave me a call a little while later and said, ‘Well, buddy, I think this is going to work.’ And so that’s when he decided to make me a co-creator of the show and an executive producer and brought me into the production process — I was involved with casting — really just brought me in with his producing partner, David Glasser. They’ve guided me every step of the way.”
How has Wallace’s fancy new Hollywood profession manifested in his private life? Properly, he purchased a brand new pickup truck — however solely after his 16-year-old one was totaled in an accident. “If I wasn’t working on a Taylor Sheridan show, I probably wouldn’t have done this, but I went down and got a lease on a brand-new Toyota Tundra that was made in Texas, and I love that thing so much. I love driving it,” Wallace says. “It is a nice reminder every time I get in that something has worked out for me, I guess, so far.”