Billy Bob Thornton (Landman) interview: I love playing this character

“ You have to definitely get in the head space for it.”

So says Billy Bob Thornton in regards to the problem of taking pictures scenes the place his character is captured and tortured by drug cartels all through Season 1 of the hit thriller Landman. “Those are the days when you spend a lot of time alone thinking,” he provides (hearken to our full interview above).

“I’ve had a lot of life experience. I’ve been around some pretty weird things. So you just kind of draw on those. If you’ve got a pillowcase over your head and people are dumping gasoline on you, it’s not hard to imagine if somebody struck a match, even though it’s not gasoline. It’s claustrophobic. So the situation itself kind of puts you in the frame of mind,” the latest Golden Globe nominee explains, referring to scenes within the season premiere and finale the place the titular landman is tied to a chair and is being crushed whereas a pillowcase covers his head. “I find that a lot with characters I’ve played over the years, that once you’re there and you got the clothes on, it really just somehow takes you into it,” he says. “Conditions really help actors. If it’s too hot, if it’s freezing cold, if you’re wet all day, if people are beating you up. I mean, wherever you are, it’s going to help you as an actor.”

Thornton stars as Tommy Norris, an abrasive straight-shooter petroleum landman who takes cost of the profitable and infrequently precarious oilfields of West Texas for M-Tex, a large oil company. The Paramount+ rookie drama was created by Oscar-nominated hit-maker Taylor Sheridan (Hell or Excessive Water, Yellowstone, 1923), and after its debut final fall, it turned the streamer’s most-watched premiere of the previous two years.

Landman costars Mad Males Emmy winner Jon Hamm as highly effective M-Tex proprietor Monty Miller, The Substance Oscar nominee Demi Moore as Monty’s spouse Cami, and Ali Larter as Tommy’s ex-wife Angela, with visitor appearances by Oscar and Emmy nominee Andy García (The Godfather Half III, For Love or Nation: The Arturo Sandoval Story) as cartel henchman Galino, and billionaire Dallas Cowboys proprietor (and oilman) Jerry Jones as himself.

Legend has it that Sheridan first pitched the collection to Thornton in late 2021 after the crimson carpet premiere of the prolific TV writer-director’s Yellowstone sequel 1883, explaining that he was writing a brand new present for Thornton, within the acclaimed actor’s voice. “ You don’t get that handed to you very often,” he admits. “When somebody says, ‘I think I have your voice, I know how you talk, I know how you think and I’m gonna write this show specifically for you,'” he says. “It was just a great honor. To see scripts written that you look at them and you don’t just want to instantly start changing things or where I didn’t have a lot of questions. In other words, it wasn’t like I was going to sit there with them and pick things apart. It was really pretty flawless.”

SEE Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Jon Hamm: Right here is each ‘Landman’ Emmy performing submission

Requested whether or not he’s ready for a long term for the present, Thornton does not hesitate to sign his dedication to Sheridan’s newest hit, stating that this “is a present I might prefer to work on for some time. I informed Taylor, I stated so long as you need me round, I am right here for this. I actually love the present. I really like doing it, I really like enjoying this character, and I really like the folks I work with. Not solely the forged, however the crew is also simply stellar.

“I’ll be there as long as they want me, and as long as I’m able,” Thornton says with a smile. “I mean, you know, when I was 35, I didn’t have to say that to someone who was interviewing me. But now the truth is at some point, I’m hoping it’s years from now, but there will be a time where I might have to do like a Peter Boyle on Everybody Loves Raymond, and just go sit in a chair and eat cake,” he jokes.

Now that Landman is a hit for Paramount+, with the collection in the midst of manufacturing for its anticipated second season, Thornton is quietly assured that followers will love what’s in retailer for Tommy and co. “Last year we had every episode when we started. We do not this year,” he reveals. “We’ve only seen about half of it. I can tell you this much. I’m loving this season, the relationships are really growing and gelling, not only as actors, but with the characters. The first season of anything, you’re explaining everything to everybody and the trick to writing things like that is to not make it seem like exposition, and I thought Taylor did a wonderful job of that in Season 1.”

“But now, people know who we are, so we don’t have to set anything up anymore. We just dove right into it and we were these people again,” he says sheepishly, not wanting to provide something away. Usually for Thornton, who comes throughout as a person who does not take himself too severely, he then provides, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, that “this season I’m actually gonna have a pillowcase on my head the entire season. Yeah, even when I’m eating, even at home, and it’s so exciting!”

Thornton is an Oscar winner for writing 1996’s Sling Blade and an Emmy nominee for Greatest Actor Miniseries/Film for Fargo. The primary season of Landman is now streaming on Paramount+.

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