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    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.Reilly, with Cole Hauser in “Yellowstone,” plays Beth with a mix of ferocity, tenderness and sex appeal. “Her femininity is to be celebrated,” Reilly said. “It can intimidate and it can seduce and it can terrify.”Emerson Miller/Paramount NetworkThat 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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How ‘Yellowstone’ Captured America

    When the television series “Yellowstone” began in 2018, it was with a chip on its shoulder. HBO had passed on the show, pitched by its writer-director-executive producer Taylor Sheridan as “The Godfather” on horseback, for not quite fitting its prestige-oriented lineup. It was picked up instead by the fledgling network Paramount, which greenlit 10 episodes, to be broadcast on a rebranded version of Spike TV.Since that relatively low-profile debut, “Yellowstone,” now in its fifth season, has gone from cable underdog to becoming one of the most-watched scripted shows on TV, one that has spawned prequels and spinoffs, a cottage industry of merch and a bit of internal drama among its cast members and producers. Most notably, its best-known actor, Kevin Costner, will not return as John Dutton, Yellowstone’s taciturn patriarch, for the show’s final episodes when they begin airing on Nov. 10.The neo-Western wrapped contemporary ideas of rugged individualism inside the soapy drama of a land-hoarding family’s succession planning. As “Yellowstone” prepares to finally reveal whether one of John Dutton’s kids — Beth (Kelly Reilly) or Kayce (Luke Grimes) or Jamie (Wes Bentley) — can take over the family business, we look back at how the series became both a chronicle of America’s culture wars and appointment viewing across the United States.Filling a Red State VoidFor millions of Americans, “Yellowstone” tapped into a deep unease they have about their changing communities.Emerson Miller/Paramount NetworkSometime in summer 2018, my phone rang in Los Angeles. It was my brother calling from Montana, where we both grew up and he still lives. He wanted to talk about a new Western television show called “Yellowstone.”For the first time ever, he said, Hollywood had gotten something right. Everyone in Montana was abuzz about it — his fishing buddies, the local radio hosts, the waitress at Pay’s Cafe down by the livestock auction yards in Billings. What did I think?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Is Debuting Friday. Will Audiences Follow?

    To make “Horizon,” he put his own money on the line and left “Yellowstone,” the series that revived his career — all with little Hollywood support.Oh, to have the self-confidence of Kevin Costner.There are few actors in the final chapter of their career who would turn down a consistent $1 million-an-episode payday to pursue the vagaries of the Wild West. Yet there are few actors who are as single-minded as Costner.For the 69-year old star and director, who has made a career of taking the road less traveled, has embarked on what many would call a foolhardy quest to turn his long-percolating story of the settling of the West post-Civil War into four theatrical films. It’s an endeavor he’s undertaking without the true support of Hollywood: No legacy studio wanted to finance his sprawling epic. And it’s one that comes at great personal cost, both financially, with Costner investing $38 million of his own money, and professionally, with his commitment to the films causing a schism with the producers of “Yellowstone,” the television franchise that revitalized his career.There is no guarantee his grand experiment will succeed. “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” is set to debut Friday. And in an unprecedented move, “Chapter 2” will hit theaters less than two months later, on Aug. 16. Both features cost in the $100 million range. Warner Bros. is releasing the films in the United States, Canada and some international territories in a service deal calling for Costner to pay for the marketing costs while collaborating with the studio on the creation of the marketing materials. (Warner Bros., according to a representative who was not permitted to speak on the record, has a small financial stake in the production of the first two films.) The deal’s structure means that should the movies backfire, there will be little financial downside for the studio but much risk for Costner himself.Abbey Lee, left, with Costner, in the first of four films envisioned by the star-director.Richard Foreman/Warner Bros.But as he has put it, letting go was never an option. He first commissioned the script back in 1988. He almost made it with Disney, but the two parties couldn’t agree on a budget and the movie didn’t go forward. Then, instead of retooling one movie to fit the parameters of potential buyers, he and the screenwriter Jon Baird turned it into four. To partly finance the films, he mortgaged a 10-acre piece of undeveloped coastline in Santa Barbara that he’s owned since 2006.“It’s hard to fall out of love for me. I don’t do that,” he told journalists during the online debut of his teaser trailer in February, and added, “There’s a lot of people out there that know I’m a little bit of a hard-head or something. When no one wanted to make the first one, I got the bright idea to make four. So I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” (Costner declined to be interviewed for this story.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kevin Costner Will Not Return to ‘Yellowstone’

    The actor and director is turning his attention to his ambitious film series about post-Civil War America.It’s official: Kevin Costner will not be returning to television’s hit neo-western “Yellowstone” for its final episodes or for any future “Yellowstone” offshoot, ending speculation about his involvement with one of TV’s biggest hits in recent years.In a video posted to social media on Thursday evening, Costner said that after a year-and-a-half working on his upcoming multi-film epic “Horizon” and thinking about “Yellowstone,” which he called a “beloved series that I love that I know you love,” he realized that he would not be able to continue. The second half of Season 5, the show’s last, is set to debut on Nov. 10.“It was something that really changed me,” Costner said about “Yellowstone,” which premiered on Paramount Network in 2018 and became an instant and durable standout. It was TV’s highest-rated drama of the 2021-22 TV season, and its Season 4 finale was the most-watched scripted prime-time telecast in 2022, Variety reported.“I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning,” Costner, 69, continued, telling fans that he has loved the relationship they have been able to develop. “I’ll see you at the movies,” he added.A representative for Costner did not immediately reply to a request for further comment on Friday.The announcement comes after will-he-or-won’t-he rumors about whether Costner would continue in the role of the ruthless Montana rancher John Dutton, which earned Costner a Golden Globe for acting in 2023. Tensions between Costner and the show’s creative team had been reported for more than a year — to the point that it was largely expected that Costner would not be involved in the conclusion of “Yellowstone.”In an emailed statement on Friday, a representative for Paramount Network said that those at the network wished him the best with the film series and that they had hoped that they would continue working with him. “Unfortunately,” the statement read, “we could not find a window that worked for him, all the other talent and our production needs in order to move forward together.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Old West Is New Again

    When Navied Mahdavian, a cartoonist, and his wife, Emelie, a filmmaker, moved from San Francisco to Mackay, Idaho (population 473), they fixated on their new hometown’s theater. Or, rather, the ghost of a theater.A red and white marquee for the Mackay Main Theater dominated part of Main Street, and Mr. and Ms. Mahdavian, who had moved in pursuit of a cheaper and less frantic way of life, resolved with other community members to reopen the cinema, which had been defunct for years.Before the big reopening, one longtime town resident seemed less than enthusiastic about the plan, Mr. Mahdavian recalled, accusing the theater boosters of trying to import an “artsy-fartsy, social-justice-warrior” sensibility to the Idaho mountains.“We’re actually showing a western,” Mr. Mahdavian said.To which the resident replied: “John Wayne?”Instead, the Mahdavians chose “Damsel,” a new-age western from 2018 featuring a heroine played by Mia Wasikowska, a wimpy male character and a masturbation scene. It didn’t go over all that well.“We probably should’ve anticipated that the reaction in town would be mixed,” said Mr. Mahdavian, 38, who has chronicled his move to a rural area in the forthcoming book “This Country.”By taking an active interest in the West of the American imagination — and the ever-evolving notions about what a western story can, or should, be — the Mahdavians are part of a larger movement.“Every generation is going to interpret differently what it sees in the West,” said Richard Aquila, a historian and author of “The Sagebrush Trail.”Photo Illustration by Kim Hoeckele for The New York TimesCowboys ride in and out of popular culture every few years, propelled by a hunger for stories that are wild, tumultuous and unvarnished. Now, as western style spreads across fashion and entertainment once more, that spirit of reinvention is being applied to reinvent the western itself, inflecting an old genre with new viewpoints.Two cultural stars of the summer, Beyoncé and Barbie, have invoked western tropes. Beyoncé wore a disco cowboy hat tilted over her face and sat atop a silver horse in portraits promoting her Renaissance World Tour, the imagery reminiscent of an extraterrestrial cowgirl. Re-creations of the hat, for fans trying to mimic the look, have sold for over $100 on Etsy. “Barbie,” which has climbed to more than $1 billion at the box office, included a lengthy sequence of Margot Robbie venturing deep into the Wild West of Los Angeles while wearing a white cowboy hat, a pink bandanna and a western-cut pink ensemble. And Taylor Swift may no longer wear western gear in public, as she did early in her career, but there were plenty of cowboy boots and cowboy hats to be seen among her fans headed to the Eras Tour shows this summer.History rhymes, fusty fashions turn trendy and cult classics become newly beloved — so it’s no surprise that cowboys keep cycling back into the popular imagination.“There’s a longstanding tradition in American history of looking West,” said Andrew Patrick Nelson, a historian of American cinema and culture at University of Utah. “Part of the appeal is the idea you can live a more authentic, exciting and rugged life.”Coming out of a period of pandemic malaise, millions of people have gone that-a-way — in their clothing choices, social media posts, and selections of TV shows and movies. In fashion, high-end brands, including Prada, unveiled spring collections comprising get-ups that smacked of the Old West. On TikTok, thousands of women have posted videos of themselves modeling outfits billed as “coastal cowgirl” — linen shirts, boots, hats and well-worn denim shorts. The #CoastalCowgirl hashtag has racked up tens of thousands of views.“Glam western is probably the No. 1 trending thing in fashion right now,” said Taylor Johnson, 36, who owns the concert wear boutique Hazel & Olive.The silver cowboy hat worn by Beyoncé in promotional images for her Renaissance tour was a fashion inspiration for fans on their way to one of the singer’s concerts in New Jersey this summer.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesTaylor Swift fans, outside the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in May.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBarbie, played by Margot Robbie, went full cowgirl as she explored the world beyond Barbie Land in “Barbie.”Warner Bros. PicturesBrunello Cucinelli, the fashion designer, said the “ease and sportiness” of western style lent itself to perennial cycles of popularity. “As a younger man, I watched many Sergio Leone movies and listened to Johnny Cash,” Mr. Cucinelli said in an email interview. “While visiting America for the first time, I remember vividly my trips to Texas and how men dressed with their tapered jackets and those great belts with large buckles.”“Yellowstone,” the soapy “red state” rancher television series, was ranked by Nielsen as the top scripted program last year. In interviews, several TikTok users said their #CoastalCowgirl posts represented their efforts to mimic Beth Dutton, the ruthless main daughter of the show played by Kelly Reilly.Kimberly Johnson, 39, a stay-at-home mother in Delaware, said the series offered a reprieve from the Covid-era divorce drama of her own life. When she saw the #CoastalCowgirl trend, she said the thought that crossed her mind was: “Now I have an excuse to dress like I’m from ‘Yellowstone’!”“Yellowstone,” which is filmed and based in Montana, pumped some $700 million in tourism spending into the state’s economy, on top of $72 million in production spending from Paramount, according to a study from the University of Montana (which was sponsored by the Media Coalition of Montana and Paramount). Nearly 20 percent of visitors to the state in 2021 attributed their travel in part to watching the series, in what economists called “‘Yellowstone’-induced” tourism.Jordan Calhoun, a writer in New York who edits the how-to site Lifehacker, was one of the fans who went West because of the show. He said his affection for the series came about in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, when he was locked down in his Harlem apartment and felt the need for a landscape that looked different from what he was seeing out his window. He longed for rows of pines, big stretches of sky. And he wanted to experience the Dutton family’s way of life.“I don’t know how to fix a fence or ride a horse or grow crops,” Mr. Calhoun, 38, said. “Self-reliance, or country living, is something that got really appealing during the pandemic.”Jordan Calhoun, a writer and editor who lives in New York, went West because of his love for “Yellowstone.”Jordan CalhounHe spent five days on a Colorado ranch in 2022. Although the trip confirmed for him that it wasn’t what he wanted full time, it taught Mr. Calhoun, who is Black, that the western landscapes he loved on TV were something he could go and enjoy. That was a realization far afield from what he had felt watching westerns when he was growing up.“I watched ‘Young Guns’ a thousand times,” he said. “There wasn’t much of me in it.”But as much as it is a place on the map, the West is also an idea, one that changes over time. And amid the latest round of fascination with cowboy culture, the western, a staple film genre since the early days of cinema, is being reimagined for a growing audience.From 2000 to 2009, Hollywood made 23 movies categorized as westerns, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. That number shot up to 42 from 2010 to 2019. Some of these new films feature Black cowboys, Native American protagonists, queer heroes and damsels far from distress. Some are directed by female filmmakers, like Jane Campion, whose 2021 movie “The Power of the Dog,” which features a most likely closeted rancher, received more Academy Award nominations than any other film last year.Alaina Roberts, an American historian who wrote “I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land,” was raised with all the classic images of what a western film looked like: Davy Crockett wrestling a bear, John Wayne squinting through the Texas dust. Her mother loved those films.But when Dr. Roberts started her own career as a scholar, those weren’t the visions of the West that captured her imagination. Instead, she wanted to research stories of her own Black family members, who were enslaved by the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes in what is now Ardmore, Okla. She also grew fascinated by the Buffalo Soldiers, all-Black regiments who policed the plains.“We shouldn’t be afraid of complexity,” said Ms. Roberts, 32, who consulted on the recent documentary series “The Real Wild West,” which focuses on Black and Hispanic cowboys, Buffalo Soldiers, Native leaders and women on the plains. “It doesn’t mean we’re trying to rewrite history.”TV shows and movies including “Yellowstone,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Bitterbrush,” and “The Power of the Dog” are reshaping the cowboy image.Top: Paramount Network, Netflix; Bottom: Magnolia Pictures, NetflixThe list of movies, TV shows and documentaries taking on these more tangled western tales keeps growing. There’s “The Harder They Fall,” a 2021 film from the director Jeymes Samuel about Black outlaws, sharpshooters, horse riders and frontier townspeople. The director Kelly Reichardt has put her stamp on the genre in two films: “Meek’s Cutoff,” which is centered on pioneer women played by Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan, who realize that a Native American man they meet on the Oregon Trail is more trustworthy than their white guide; and “First Cow,” about a pair of misfits, played by Orion Lee and John Magaro, trying to make a go of it in mid-19th-century Oregon. There’s also Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider,” a rodeo story about the Lakota Sioux tribe.Ms. Mahdavian, 41, who moved with her husband from San Francisco to rural Idaho, is another filmmaker who has trained her camera on the West. Her 2022 documentary, “Bitterbrush,” follows female cattle ranchers near her new home. “I don’t have an agenda to kill the western,” she said. “I find myself drawn to telling stories that feel true to a certain type of lived experience.”Western films have tended to reflect the experience of the people who produced them and the ideas in the air at the time of their production, film historians say. The westerns of the World War II era, for example, fulfilled a hunger for clear-cut messages. Some see “Stagecoach,” the 1939 John Wayne classic, as a parable for the New Deal: A group of Americans (a whiskey salesman, a drunken doctor) have to work together to prevail over what’s lurking around them.Then came the 1960s, when social changes raised questions about the old order, driving a desire for new types of anti-establishment western heroes, like Clint Eastwood’s antihero “Man With No Name” character, or the jovial outlaws played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”“It’s almost like a Rorschach inkblot test,” Richard Aquila, 76, a historian and author of “The Sagebrush Trail” said. “Every generation is going to interpret differently what it sees in the West.”John Wayne, the quintessential western actor, in the 1939 film “Stagecoach.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesFor die-hard lovers of western films and novels, the periodic resurgence of the genre is invigorating because it sends new fans toward old classics. W.F. Strong, a professor of communications and culture at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, delights in hearing from young readers who have recently discovered Larry McMurtry’s 1985 novel “Lonesome Dove,” which follows a group of lovably bone-headed cowpokes from their tiny hometown, Lonesome Dove, to the plains of Montana.Mr. Strong, 68, said he particularly loved how Mr. McMurtry, who died in 2021, was able to capture the lives of ordinary Americans in the novel. “He was writing about my people — and I didn’t realize you could do that as an author,” he recalled. “When I was young, I thought you had to be writing about glamorous things far away, like England.”For many people, including those taking part in the #cowgirl memes on social media, that’s part of the appeal — the idea that the western experience seems within reach, that wide-open plains are closer than they appear. Kyra Smolkin, a content creator in Los Angeles who has been posting her cowgirl-themed fashions on TikTok, said she grew up in Toronto “romanticizing small towns and ranches.”“What’s cool about cowgirl style is it’s attainable — there’s no barrier to entry,” Ms. Smolkin, 30, said. “I love that there’s an ease to it. It’s easy to make your own.”And for the Mahdavians, the couple who moved from San Francisco to Idaho, there was a thrill to making the western story their own, by setting up a home in the kind of landscape that they had long associated with the movies. They built a house on a small plot of land about a 20-minute drive from Mackay. It is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and there are no people in sight.They have also gotten past the mixed reception they received for their opening night at the renovated theater on Main Street. They pulled it off by showing “The Quiet Man,” a 1952 western romance starring John Wayne.“We had, like, 70 people come, which for a population of 500 is a lot,” Mr. Mahdavian recalled. “People definitely responded to John Wayne.”First collage: Bettmann/Getty Images (background); Amir Hamja/ The New York Times, Maggie Shannon for The New York Times, Paramount Network, Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images (hats); Paramount Network, Jason Kempin/Getty Images (shirts); Gabriela Campos/Santa Fe New Mexican, via Associated Press, Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times, George Frey/EPA, via Shutterstock, Roy Rochlin/Getty Images (boots)Second collage: George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty Images (background); Amy Sussman/Getty Images (body) More

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    Wes Bentley Was at Rock Bottom. Now He Is on ‘Yellowstone.’

    Years of addiction and struggle followed his breakout role in “American Beauty.” He lived to tell the tale, and get a major role on TV’s biggest show.It’s not easy being Jamie Dutton.The adopted son of the ruthless rancher John Dutton on Paramount Network’s wildly popular neo-western series “Yellowstone,” Jamie just wanted to be a cowboy. Instead the man who raised him sent him off to law school. He wanted to be governor of Montana, but John stepped over him in humiliating fashion. His sister, Beth, eviscerates him on a regular basis. He has spent four-and-a-half seasons desperate for the paterfamilias’ attention while also hating his guts.Nor is it easy playing Jamie Dutton. Wes Bentley can tell you all about that. Jamie has taken him to some dark places, the kinds of places he knows all too well.“He’s incredibly sad,” the actor said over brunch recently at an outdoor cafe in Los Angeles. “I’ve always dealt with my sadness with things like comedy, or humor, or drugs at one point, or trying to just ignore it and finding another way out of it. But you can’t do that when you’re trying to portray someone’s sadness. You have to let it be there. That’s been the hardest part of it all, and it’s weighed on my life a little bit.”Bentley, 44, makes it clear that he’s not complaining. He’s grateful to be a key part of the most popular drama on television, which had its midseason finale on Sunday amid a fresh batch of potential familial murder plots. More than that, he’s grateful to be alive.And yet, “The regrets are always going to be there,” he added.Most people are likely to have first encountered Bentley as Ricky Fitts, Kevin Spacey’s pot-dealing neighbor in the 1999 film “American Beauty.” He was 21 when the movie debuted, and he seemed like a handsome, soulful young man with a future. But he grew disillusioned with the roles that came his way next — “It was all vampires and underdeveloped young people,” he said — and found himself drifting into addiction. Heroin. Cocaine. Lots of booze. In 2008, he was arrested and pleaded guilty to heroin possession and trying to pass a counterfeit $100 bill. He was falling toward his bottom fast.Bentley (with Thora Birch) found his breakout role early, as the sensitive pot dealer Ricky in the Oscar-winning 1999 film “American Beauty.” Lorey Sebastian/DreamworksHe remembers taking a job on a cheapie Stephen King adaptation, “Dolan’s Cadillac” (2009), and mapping out his next steps: “This is probably my last acting job,” he told himself. “I’m going to be a drug dealer and a D.J.”Around this time he fell in love with the woman who later became his wife, the associate producer and assistant director Jacqui Swedberg. This didn’t get him sober; it rarely works that way. But it made him want to be better and made him realize that he had no control over his life, and that he might just have something to live for.“Before I was like, I’m partying, fine, but I can stop this,” he said. “Now it was like, ‘Man, I can’t stop this, and I really want to.’” A friend in the industry started taking Bentley to 12-step meetings. He liked what he heard. And he saw that a different kind of life was possible.Bentley has been sober since July 5, 2009. Today, with a beard and eyeglasses that accentuate his sharp features, he seems present, forthright and easygoing. He blows off steam playing soccer in a league and hiking. “I have a constant stream of energy,” he said. “That’s what led to my addiction. I needed something to react to that energy.”But Jamie is never far away. It’s the role that really put him on the map, after supporting parts in post-crisis movies like “The Hunger Games” and “Interstellar.” It’s the gig of his life.And sometimes, it hurts like hell.Jamie’s most frequent “Yellowstone” combatant is his sister, Beth, played by the English actress Kelly Reilly. There’s a brute force to their scenes together, emotionally and, in the midseason finale, physically. (Beth knows how to handle herself.) When they were teens, Jamie took Beth to get an abortion, without telling her she was also getting a hysterectomy. She never forgave him. Jamie blames Beth for their mother’s death (as does Beth). She takes every opportunity to emasculate Jamie.Much of the pain Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), left, feels as a member of the Dutton clan on “Yellowstone” is inflicted by his sister, Beth (Kelly Reilly).Paramount NetworkAs Reilly said in a recent phone interview, “There’s something about his weakness that appalls her.”It can be exhausting to watch, and to play.“Wes and I have been doing this now together for five years,” Reilly said. “We know each other quite well, and we take care of one another tremendously. We both have to be quite fearless in those scenes. They’re quite ugly sometimes.” When there’s a chance to laugh together between takes, they jump on it.“Then you try to go home without carrying it all into the rest of your day,” she said.But that’s not always easy, especially after living with a character for so long.“I’ve prided myself for most of my career on leaving it at the door, or like an athlete would say, leaving it on the field,” Bentley said. “But Jamie’s sadness permeates my life, even though I’m not sad. I’m very lucky to have a great family and be where I’m at in life, but he’s always there behind me, clawing at that, especially when I’m shooting.”He said his wife sometimes has to point out Jamie’s unwanted presence: “‘You’re letting him come home now,” she tells him. “‘Jamie’s coming home and we don’t want him here.’”This season, however, Jamie’s step has been a bit more lively. The Dutton family’s corporate foes unleashed a barracuda, Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), to turn Jamie against his family’s interests. It wasn’t hard; Jamie’s resentment had become a volcano waiting to erupt. But ever since Sarah seduced Jamie, and whispered, Lady Macbeth-like, in his ear, Olivieri has noticed a change in the actor as well as the character. Bentley had become more assertive, she said, less likely to apologize for things that aren’t his fault.“I have watched Wes change as a man, even in the short period of time that we’ve worked together,” she said in a recent video call. “It’s really hard as an actor to not absorb the character that you’re playing. You just become that person. When you’re a really good actor, it’s like you almost can’t even help it. And Wes is a really good actor.”Jamie’s sadness has always lived side by side with his capacity for evil. Under duress from Beth, he killed his biological father and, before that, a reporter who got too close to the family’s criminal ways. In the most recent episode, he began to consider the logistics of eliminating John and Beth. Through these developments Bentley has conjured a tricky mix of despair and cold, Machiavellian calculation.“Is Jamie evil?” the “Yellowstone” co-creator Taylor Sheridan wrote in an email. “In a lesser actor’s hands the answer would be easy, but Wes has crafted a vulnerable, honest and emotional character who allows the audience to understand the motivation behind his actions — even if there is no questioning the act itself.”Bentley went through a difficult period of alcohol abuse and drugs in the years after “American Beauty.” He has been sober since 2009.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesThe “Yellowstone” directors rave about Bentley’s commitment, sensitivity and ability to think on his feet. “It’s remarkable, his ability to make you mad at Jamie, make you hate him and have him break your heart at the same time,” Stephen Kay said in a phone interview. “He’s one of one, if you ask me.”Kay made the comparison to another famous fictional son and brother, this one from a different crime family.“That role is so hard, so deceptively tricky,” Kay said. “We’ve been comparing it since Season 1 to Fredo in ‘The Godfather.’ John Cazale is arguably one of the best actors of all time, so if you’re building a show with a Fredo, you better hand the part to somebody who can play.”Christina Alexandra Voros, who directed the midseason finale, marveled at Bentley’s “courage to unravel himself.”“Everyone’s tortured on the show, but Jamie is in particular one of the more tortured characters,” she continued by phone. “He’s also interesting because you never really know if he’s a villain or a hero.”Bentley is more than happy to save his unraveling for the screen. He tried the other way, and he knows he was fortunate to survive.He lived to tell. Now he can take Jamie along for the ride.“I believe in fate, and I believe I went through all that, caused all that, and experienced all that, because I was going to get here,” he said. “There are many things that I regret, but I’m just so happy with my life.” More

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    Harrison Ford Loves His Craft. ‘1923’ Tested His Limits.

    LOS ANGELES — In the course of 20 months and in the midst of a pandemic, Harrison Ford filmed a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” sequel in England. He shot a 10-part comedy, “Shrinking,” in Burbank. He herded cattle up a mountain in subzero Montana temperatures for “1923,” the latest prequel to the hit western series “Yellowstone.”He also celebrated his 80th birthday.“I’ve been working pretty much back-to-back, which is not what I normally do,” said Ford, unshaven, wearing bluejeans and boots and easing into a chair at the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel here earlier this month. He was in Los Angeles for one night, for the premiere of “1923,” debuting Sunday on Paramount+. From here, it was on to Las Vegas the next morning for the next screening, yet another stop after a stretch of filming, travel and promotion that would exhaust an actor half his age.“I don’t how it happened,” Ford said, taking a sip from his cup of coffee. “But it happened.”It has been 45 years since Ford leaped off the screen as Han Solo in the first “Star Wars” movie, laying the foundation for a blockbuster career in which he has personified some of the most commercially successful movie franchises in film history. He has appeared in over 70 movies, with a combined worldwide box office gross of more than $9 billion. By now, it would seem, he has nothing left to prove.But at an age when many of his contemporaries have receded from public view, Ford is not slowing down, much less stepping away to spend more time at his ranch in Jackson, Wyo. He is still trying new things — “1923” represents his first major television part — still searching for one more role, still driven to stay before the camera.“I love it,” he said. “I love the challenge and the process of making a movie. I feel at home. It’s what I’ve spent my life doing.”And why should he slow down? Ford shows no sign of fading, physically or mentally — he was fleet and limber as he strode into the Luxe for our interview, cap pulled down, and later, as he worked the room at the post-premiere party at the Hollywood restaurant Mother Wolf. In his pace and eclectic choice of roles, including the weathered and weary rancher Jacob Dutton of “1923,” he seems as determined as ever to show that he can be more than just the swashbuckling action hero who gave the world Han Solo and Indiana Jones.“He can rest on his laurels: He doesn’t need to work financially,” said Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars” and who, at 71, does not miss the 5 a.m. wake-up calls and the hustling for the next role. “To be doing another ‘Indiana Jones’ — I’m in awe of him.”Ford is known for being gruff and nonresponsive, an actor not given to introspection and with little patience for “put me on the couch” questions. There were flashes of that during our 45 minutes together. “I know I walked myself into that dark alley where you’re now going to have to ask me to describe the character,” he said at one point. “And I don’t want to.”But for the most part Ford was forthcoming, relaxed and contemplative. This was a promotional tour, and after a half-century in the business, he knows how to do this. “I’m here to sell a movie,” Ford said, though, of course, he was there to sell a TV show — and to some extent, himself.“I don’t want to reinvent myself,” he said. “I just want to work.”Ford, center, as Jacob Dutton, an earlier patriarch of what will become the Dutton ranching empire of “Yellowstone.”Emerson Miller/Paramount+Jason Segel, left, with Ford in the Apple TV+ show “Shrinking,” of which Segel is a creator. Ford will play a psychiatrist, his second major TV role.Apple TV+FORD WAS ALWAYS more than just another charismatic Hollywood action star. He could act. There was the swagger and the smirk, but they were put to service in presenting complex heroes with flaws and self-doubt, including John Book, the detective in “Witness”; Jack Ryan, the C.I.A. analyst at the center of the Tom Clancy novels that inspired the films; and Rick Deckard, battling bioengineered humanoids in “Blade Runner.”That style distinguished him for much of his career from monosyllabic, musclebound action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude Van Damme, and it has always been integral to his appeal: Hamill said he was struck by it the first time they acted together.“He was impossibly cool, world-weary, wary, somewhat snarky, flippant,” Hamill said.Television isn’t entirely new territory for Ford. When George Lucas cast him as a white-cowboy-hat-wearing drag racer in the 1973 film “American Graffiti,” Ford was 30, making a living as a part-time carpenter in Los Angeles. By then he had already been picking up modest roles in series like “Ironside,” “The Virginian” and “Gunsmoke” since the late 1960s.His role in “1923” is anything but modest: the great-great-great uncle of John Dutton III, the family patriarch portrayed by Kevin Costner in “Yellowstone,” TV’s most popular drama. As with “Yellowstone,” the scope of “1923” is vast — the Western vistas, the sweeping aerial shots, the complexity of the characters and their stories. It also features another major star, Helen Mirren, as his wife, Cara, the tough matriarch of the family.Ford watches little television — he said doesn’t have the time — and he knew little about “Yellowstone” when his agent first brought him the role. (In preparation, he watched some of “1883,” the first “Yellowstone” prequel, which follows an earlier generation of Duttons as they travel west by wagon train to establish the family ranch.) Based on an advance screener of the pilot, the cinematic ambitions of “1923” would be familiar to anyone who has watched “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad.” But they have, these past four months, been a pleasant surprise for Ford.“They keeping calling it television,” Ford said, gesturing with a twist of his upper torso to a television screen in the next room. “But it’s so un-television. It is, you know, a huge vista. It’s an incredibly ambitious story that he’s telling in epic scale. The scale of the thing is enormous I think for the television.”Ford said he had agreed to the role after Taylor Sheridan, the lead creator behind the “Yellowstone” franchise, brought him to his ranch outside Fort Worth and sketched out the character. (“I’m 80, and I’m playing 77,” Ford said with a wry grin. “It’s a bit of a stretch.”) Ford was intrigued by Dutton, a stoic and somber rancher who must battle in the final years of his life to protect his land and family.“The character is not the usual character for me,” Ford said, likening it to his role playing a psychiatrist with Jason Segel in “Shrinking,” created by Segel and Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein (of “Ted Lasso”), debuting next month on Apple TV+. “I’ve never been to a psychiatrist in my life.”“I’m aware of the interest in the politics of the characters,” he said of the “Yellowstone” franchise. Of his own character, he added: “I’m not interested in the man’s politics.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFilming “1923” tested his resilience and his love of the craft. Montana proved a brutal place to work; the cast and crew encountered blinding blizzards and stunningly cold temperatures during 10-hour days spent almost entirely outdoors.“It was a nightmare,” said Timothy Dalton, a former James Bond, who plays a rancher who challenges Ford for control of the land. “We are on top of a hill with a blasting wind coming at us. The cameras freeze up. Your toes freeze up.”Ben Richardson, who directed most of the “1923” episodes, described filming Ford as he rode horses up steep mountains, against knife-sharp winds, as Dutton herds cattle to higher altitudes and the promise of fields to graze.“I’ve never had a complaint from him,” Richardson said. “I can’t express how much of a team player he is — to the point that it’s shocking. He’s Harrison Ford. He could be doing anything. I’m sure there are people who would prefer to have a double standing in. He did not.” He added that he had “probably seen ‘Blade Runner’ 20 times,” studying how Ford presented himself onscreen.“There’s something truly compelling about watching him deal with difficult situations,” he said.From Ford’s earliest days as Han Solo, he has been wary of being typecast as a go-to action hero. He agreed to do the blockbusters urged on him by a Lucas or Steven Spielberg, but he also sought more than laser guns and bullwhips, gravitating to films like Peter Weir’s “Witness” (1985), and to directors like Alan J. Pakula (“Presumed Innocent,” “The Devil’s Own”).“I always went from a movie for me to a movie for them,” he said, referring to directors — and audiences — with a taste for action-hero blockbusters. “I don’t want to work for just one audience.”So it is that Ford will play a rancher in “1923” and a therapist in “Shrinking”— six months before his fifth “Indiana Jones” movie, “The Dial of Destiny,” opens in June.“He doesn’t get the credit for the diversity of his choices that he has chosen,” Hamill said. “Everybody loves ‘Indiana Jones,’ but we know what it is, and we’ve seen it before — he could do those for the rest of his life. The fact that he is doing something more challenging and more thought-provoking is something I admire about him.”Ford (right, with Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill) leaped off the screen in his breakout role as Han Solo in the first “Star Wars” movie 45 years ago.20th Century FoxFord, left, with Sean Connery in the third movie of the “Indiana Jones” franchise, “The Last Crusade.” The fifth is scheduled for June 2023.Paramount Pictures, via Everett CollectionA CENTRAL PARADOX of Ford’s biography is that “Star Wars,” the franchise arguably most responsible for reshaping the industry in its image, made him one of the last true movie stars, a man whose name alone could sell tickets; Hollywood’s shift from star vehicles to intellectual property, from big screen to small, can now be neatly tracked over the arc of his career.“Star Wars” united a country — crossing geographic, class and political lines — enthralling audiences who gathered in theaters to share in its fairy-tale story of love and adventure. These days, audiences are made up of friends and family gathered in a living room, and Ford faces questions about whether the “Yellowstone” franchise is a paean to Red America.“I’m aware of the interest in the politics of the characters,” he said, adding that he had no interest in the political beliefs of Jacob Dutton. (Ford, who was born in Chicago to Democratic parents and supported Joe Biden against Donald Trump in 2020, suggested that the audience for “Yellowstone” was so vast that it was unlikely to be made up of only Republicans.)When Ford began working on “1923,” Sheridan told him to approach it as if it was 10 hourlong movies. “And that’s the way it feels to me,” Ford said. “But we’re working at a television pace. There’s something about movies that allows for, you know, a little bit, you know, a kind of luxury of time and a certain …”He hesitated as he considered the risks of a road better not taken, of Harrison Ford weighing in on the merits of movies versus television. “I don’t think I really want to get too deep into this because there’s no place to go with it, for me.”“I’m doing the same job,” he said. “It’s just being boxed and distributed in a different way.”At a time when many contemporaries are winding down, Ford still keeps a demanding schedule. “I love it,” he said of his work. “It’s what I’ve spent my life doing.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFord is not a pioneer. He resisted television for many years, and in finally relenting, he is following other major box office stars — Kevin Costner on “Yellowstone” and Sylvester Stallone on “Tulsa King” — who have joined Taylor Sheridan television productions.Still, as he prepared to attend the premiere of “1923,” at a big screen tucked away in an American Legion Hall in Hollywood, it was clear where his heart remained.“The important thing is to go into a dark room with strangers, experience the same thing and have an opportunity to consider your common humanity,” Ford said. “With strangers. And the music — the sound system is better, right? The dark is deeper, right? And the icebox not so close.”Ford paused at his revealing reference to a kitchen appliance from another era — the era when he grew up. He could not help but laugh at his lapse. “Icebox!” he said. More

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    Mo Brings Plenty Was About to Quit Acting. Then Came ‘Yellowstone.’

    The actor wasn’t satisfied with the Native representation he saw onscreen. Now he’s helping TV’s biggest drama get it right.In a scene from Season 3 of the hit neo-Western series “Yellowstone,” Mo, the steady right hand and loyal fixer of the Native American power broker Thomas Rainwater, lights some sage and lets the smoke waft through Rainwater’s office. They’re about to meet with Angela Blue Thunder (Q’orianka Kilcher), a hard-charging Native lawyer with a take-no-prisoners attitude toward going after the Montana ranch land owned by John Dutton (Kevin Costner).Angela contemptuously douses the sage with water, but Mo — played by the actor Mo Brings Plenty — with a “who is this person?” look on his face, relights it after she leaves, allowing his boss to breathe in some of its healing powers. The moment contains both seriousness and subtle humor.“In our culture, we use these items to cleanse the space and protect the mind,” Brings Plenty said in a recent video interview from Fort Worth, Texas, where “Yellowstone,” on Paramount Network, had its Season 5 premiere screening this month. “But burning sage and sweet grass has become a fad and has been culturally misappropriated,” he added, and those substances “are sacred to us.” For Brings Plenty, getting these details right is crucial.“On and off the set, Mo really tries to be a bridge connecting Indigenous people with our industry in film,” said Kilcher, who is of Indigenous South American heritage. “It’s amazing to see all the good work that he’s doing.”In a series that takes great care with its Native American characters and story lines, Brings Plenty keeps it as real as anyone. Onscreen he exudes a quiet strength, even when his character is executing some of the show’s frequently unsavory business. Offscreen he’s an adviser and a trusted confidante of the “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan and his creative team. He even wrangles horses.Playing a character who started off as Rainwater’s nameless driver, Brings Plenty has gradually become a regular presence, especially in episodes that involve Native rituals. At the end of Season 4, he conducts a hanbleceya, a sort of vision quest, for Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), a white character married to a Native American woman, Monica (Kelsey Asbille). In a moving scene from the most recent episode, which aired on Sunday, he oversees a burial ritual for the son that died at birth after Monica was in a car accident.From left, Gil Birmingham, Brings Plenty and Luke Grimes in Season 5.Paramount NetworkThat last sequence hit home for Brings Plenty, whose mother lost three infant sons when he was a child. “It was a powerful moment, and very real for me,” he said.Brings Plenty, 53, was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota — though his mother is from the Cheyenne River Reservation and he has relatives on the Rosebud Reservation, also both in South Dakota.“I spent time on all three reservations, so I always say I grew up in the Lakota Nation,” he said.His interest in acting dates back to the days when he would ask children on the reservation why they didn’t have more pride in their identity. The most common answer? They never saw themselves on TV.“So I thought, ‘How do I change that?’” he said. “Because I wasn’t on TV either.”He added: “The misrepresentation of us has been occurring for so long.” He saw an opportunity to be the change he wanted to see.He started in theater, worked his way into stunt riding (“I knew I could fall off a horse and take it”), then began landing supporting roles in film and television (“Hell on Wheels,” “The Revenant”).But just a few years ago, he was ready to pack it in and return to his ranch in Kansas. Appreciative of his opportunities, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the Native representation he saw onscreen. He felt discouraged. He and his family agreed that he would wait until the end of the year to make a decision. That’s when “Yellowstone” came calling.Gil Birmingham, who plays Thomas Rainwater and has been friends with Brings Plenty for several years, likes to tell the story of how the character Mo got his name on the show. Sheridan had not given the character a name — he was just Rainwater’s driver — and during one of the many scenes between Birmingham and Brings Plenty, Birmingham called his old friend by his real name: “Mo”(short for Moses).“So Taylor decided that he was going to use that name for the character as well,” Birmingham said in a phone interview. “When Mo is out and about, it’s pretty funny because people tend to call you by your character name, and it happens to be his real name. There’s no distinction there for fans.”When fans do recognize Brings Plenty in public, it’s often because of his braids, which hang below his waist. As with most matters in Mo’s world, the braids carry cultural significance.“We wear two braids as men to honor the gifts of the women,” he said.“One strand” of each braid “represents the higher power,” he continued. “The second strand represents the Earth, which is also a physical being. The third strand represents our spirit. It’s a reminder that if we can live with that balance of all things, and we bring them all together, it makes a braid that is strong.”For Sheridan, Brings Plenty’s overriding quality is truthfulness.“There is a real honesty to Mo’s acting — a comfortable vulnerability,” Sheridan said in an email. “One of the great things about long-form storytelling is that it allows me to react to actors who really shine. Mo began as a co-star on the show, and now he is a series regular. That is how much his portrayal leapt from the screen.”“Mo brings a great stability and a great loyalty, and you just have a sense that you’re being protected and you’re safe with Mo around,” Birmingham says of Brings Plenty’s character. Barrett Emke for The New York TimesThe dynamics among the Native American characters on the broadly drawn “Yellowstone” are probably the show’s most nuanced. Thomas Rainwater, the most prominent Native character, did not grow up on the reservation; he is a suit-and-tie-wearing graduate of Harvard Business School who applies his knowledge to his duties as chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Broken Rock. Mo did grow up on the reservation; one could argue that he operates closer to the culture than his boss. Angela Blue Thunder is also from the reservation, and she has scores to settle with the Dutton family.They all have one thing in common: They want the land that they see as rightfully theirs — and that the Duttons fiercely protect as their own.“Mo brings a great cultural anchoring, and a perspective that tries to balance out the kind of world that Thomas Rainwater is operating in — that is, a system of laws and paradigms that aren’t familiar for, or operated by, the Native people,” Birmingham said of Brings Plenty’s character. “Mo brings a great stability and a great loyalty, and you just have a sense that you’re being protected and you’re safe with Mo around.”These are heady times for Native American representation on television, with a great quantity and range of characters and stories. “Dark Winds,” on AMC +, follows two Navajo policemen investigating a mysterious double murder. ABC’s “Alaska Daily,” about the doings of a scrappy Anchorage newspaper, shines a light on the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women, a subject also featured on “Yellowstone” and in Sheridan’s 2017 film “Wind River” (its cast includes Birmingham and Asbille of “Yellowstone”). Hulu’s “Reservation Dogs,” a droll comedy about four teenagers growing up on an Oklahoma reservation, won a prestigious Peabody Award.“‘Yellowstone’ was the catalyst to make room, to give space and inspiration for others to get involved with Native stories and give Native people opportunities,” Brings Plenty said. “We’ve often been left behind, but the way I see it and understand it, Taylor Sheridan said: ‘Come on, let’s go. That’s enough of you guys being back there. Let’s bring you up to the forefront.’”Sheridan says it’s a matter of accuracy.“One cannot accurately tell the story of the West without telling the story of the original inhabitants of the region,” he said. “Sure, ‘Yellowstone’ is highly dramatized, but the story lines are all rooted in truth. To ignore the impact of our settlement on Native people is to tell half the story. And the Native American half has been habitually ignored by the entertainment industry. We don’t ignore it. We look right at it.”For Brings Plenty, it’s all about honoring his culture and his ancestors — not just other Lakota, but all Native Americans.“My grandparents, they always said: ‘Speak Indian. Dance Indian. Sing Indian,’” he said. “They never said, ‘Speak Lakota’ — everything was Indian. So we try to remember those teachings and pass them on.” More