Don’t Make Kelly Reilly Go Beth Dutton on You

If Beth Dutton were Kelly Reilly’s friend, if she were sitting here, in the garden of a SoHo hotel, Reilly would worry. She would urge Beth to stop smoking, to drink less, to give therapy a try.

“If she were my best friend, I’d be like, ‘Give yourself an easier time,’” Reilly said.

But Beth Dutton is no one’s friend. She is the brutal, wounded, savagely funny heroine of the Montana-set Paramount Network drama “Yellowstone.” Reilly, 47, has played her since the show began in 2018. The second half of the fifth and apparently final season arrives on Paramount and CBS on Nov. 10. They will be the show’s first episodes without its star Kevin Costner, who departed the series, citing scheduling issues, amid reports of tensions between him and the creator, Taylor Sheridan.

During the series, Beth has faced down attempted rape, attempted assassination, professional back stabbing, personal betrayal. Through it all, Reilly has played her with a kind of animal ferocity (take, for example, a Season 1 scene of Beth scaring off a wolf) shot through with unexpected tenderness. Hers is the rare performance that feels authentically dangerous — for the actor, for the character, for anyone watching at home.

That the Emmys haven’t recognized Reilly suggests that there is something at least a little wrong with Emmys. But Beth remains a favorite among the show’s fans. There are TikToks and supercuts of Beth’s most vicious comebacks, mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Don’t make me go Beth Dutton on you” and “You are the trailer park, and I am the tornado.”

Reilly is no Beth Dutton. She is English by birth and a redhead. In person, she is softer, more thoughtful, profoundly empathetic in a way that Beth would find embarrassing. When I met her at that boutique hotel, on an afternoon in mid September, Reilly wore loose silk separates, not an out-for-blood business suit, and ordered tea for us (regrettably) in place of Beth’s preferred bourbon.