How Landman Cast Gets Through Family Dinner Scenes Without Laughing (Excl)
Even the Husbandman cast can’t contain their laughter while filming family dinner scenes Billy Bob Thornton (Tommy Norris) and Ali Larter (Angela Norris).
“The editors really help us with that,” Jacob Loflandwho plays Cooper Norris, exclusively told We weekly ahead of the season 2 premiere on Sunday, November 16. “There are plenty of shots where you find yourself smiling or almost laughing. You can’t help it because you’re just seeing it happen before your eyes.”
Michelle Randolphwho plays Ainsley Norris, narrated Us that she sometimes feels ‘so stupid’ when she says the wildest lines.
“What do I say in the first episode?” she asked Lofland. “Something about how your Adam’s apple is a soup can.”
Randolph referred to her line: “Did you swallow a soup can? Oh, that’s your Adam’s apple.”
The Landman season 2 premiere featured one of those iconic family dinners – and this one had a theme. After Ainsley is accepted to Texas Christian University, Angela decorates the house for a fun, wholesome evening. Of course, things get a little awkward when she and Tommy get into it, resulting in a cacio e pepe food fight.
“There’s something about it that feels like they’re enjoying it a little bit,” Randolph said Us about the family feuds between her on-screen parents.
Their costar, Colm Feore (Nathan), narrated Us that the laughter inevitably comes when Thornton “throws out an improvised zinger” or when a sign is thrown and it “almost decapitates someone.” Sometimes, he explained, the crew falls apart even more than the cast.
“This is really crazy stuff,” he continued. “It’s so much fun when you try to play it fair, you do it seriously.”
His character – along with James Jordan‘s Dale – is present for all family dinner scenes because he lives in the Norris house.
‘We are being held hostage here [Angela] says we eat paella, we eat paella. … No matter what she says,” Feore said of his character. ‘There is an intensity in the circus she leads, and we just have to learn to deal with it. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s not.”
Besides the obvious troubles in the oil industry this season, viewers will continue to see the Norris family dynamic in all its unhinged glory. Both Lofland and Randolph just want their characters to get along – a departure from the hatred they heap on each other.
“We would [like] for [our relationship] to grow a little more. We have a lot of fun with it because we get along personally,” Randolph said. ‘Of course I love Jacob. I feel like he’s my real brother, but I don’t have that relationship with my siblings. So it’s nice to have that dynamic on screen.”
Michelle Randolph knows Landman viewers are confused by her character Ainsley’s behavior, but she has no regrets about the way she chose to play her. “It’s hard not to be aware of it,” Randolph, 27, told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday, December 22. “But I distance myself from it and the point is: I have the script. […]
Randolph noted that the audience doesn’t know much about Cooper and Ainsley’s history, and where this animosity comes from.
“I like to say they are complete opposites of each other. I think everything Ainsley represents despises Cooper and vice versa,” she continued. “There is no common ground between the two.”
Lofland added: “I think there’s a lot of love. There’s love, just in a way of, ‘I hate you.'”
New episodes of Husbandman Season 2 premieres every Sunday on Paramount+ starting November 16.
