‘Countryman’ left me in tears and speaks to me so powerfully

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains mild spoilers from “Landman” Season 2, Episode 2, “Sins of the Father,” which premiered Sunday, Nov. 23 on Paramount+.

Sam Elliott is the ultimate cowboy actor, so it’s no surprise that he teamed up with Taylor Sheridan and became a fixture in his constellation of shows. He first appeared in the ‘Yellowstone’ prequel, ‘1883’, and now stars as TL Norris, the father of Billy Bob Thornton’s main character, Tommy, in the second season of ‘Landman’.

The audience first meets TL in a more emotional state than the stoic actor often portrays, as he receives news that his wife has died in a memory care facility. Meanwhile, TL is in a separate facility, his body broken down from a life in the oil fields, and it seems he only exists to see the West Texas sunset every day.

When asked how he was able to evoke such intense emotions in the show, Elliott said it was a naturalistic process.

“It’s just there on the page,” he said. “I had time to think about it. I just wanted to be open to whatever came my way. When you have that kind of material, you don’t look at a piece of material, or at least I don’t look at a piece of material, and say, ‘I’d really like to cry here,’ or, ‘I really enjoy making the audience cry,’ or whatever. It just has to come naturally. One of the great gifts of Taylor’s material is that it just lets those kinds of emotions flow. I have a good time spent some of my time in tears this entire season so it wasn’t something I expected but it’s just something that happened.

Additionally, Elliott said he feels a deep connection to Sheridan’s stories, which extend to the quiet life he lives with his wife, actor Katharine Ross, and their daughter Cleo.

“I’ve spent a lot of my life in the outdoors, and there’s something about Taylor’s material that I think, in some way, it depends on that, and that really resonates deeply with me,” Elliott said. “It’s this guy who’s connected to the ground, coming up out of the ground. It’s certainly not like ‘1883,’ where we’re out in the elements all the time and all that, but there’s something about it that I personally appreciate. It’s like where I live. I live on the west side of Malibu. I’ve been there for 50 years with my wife and daughter. That totally takes me away from LA, and it’s a choice I made. It’s probably not the right choice. smartest choice if it’s about pursuing a career in film.

“I’m in the elements, and that’s the life I’ve chosen, that Katharine, me and Cleo, all three, embrace,” he continued. “There’s something about this guy sitting in a wheelchair at 81 or 82, as old as he is, watching the sun go down. I mean, I don’t know how much more I can say about it than that. There’s a reason for it. He’s drawn to that and he talks about it in Episode 2, the light and the dust and the heat and the lack of moisture and the things we hate about that country. It hates us all day long, and then it gives us this sunset. Those elements speak very, very strongly against me.

This interview has been edited and condensed.