To play a ‘tornado’ in ‘Yellowstone,’ Kelly Reilly became as obsessive as her fans
Here’s a tip for fans of the western-flavored drama “Yellowstone”: If you spot Kelly Reilly at the airport or in a coffee shop, you don’t have to worry that she will confront you. She has no desire to ruin your day.
Nor do you have to congratulate her on her vicious verbal takedowns of business interests, ambitious developers and others vying for her father’s massive Montana ranch so they can transform the picturesque landscape into a concrete-covered playground of vacation homes and resort attractions.
Because as the Paramount Network series, a bona fide blockbuster that has become arguably the most popular series on television, launches its highly anticipated fifth season Sunday, Reilly is finding out that her performance in “Yellowstone” is so convincing that many fans believe she is Beth Dutton, the ruthless daughter of Kevin Costner’s John.
Armed with a volcanic personality and acid-tipped diatribes for anyone who opposes her and her father, Beth has high-stepped past the series’ other colorful characters to become a singular force of nature: “You are the trailer park, and I am the tornado” is just one of the trademark lines that has appeared on T-shirts celebrating Beth. But Reilly is very much not a Beth type.
“My life could not be more removed from the world of Beth, but people really do think I’m her,” Reilly said during a Zoom interview from her home in London. “In a coffee shop, they’ll say, ‘Hi, Beth.’ I’ve been acting since I was 17 years old, and I’ve never had a character that has been this strong in flavor and gotten such a passionate response. It’s horrifying and exciting, depending on the day.”
The British actor, whose previous projects have included the films “Flight” and “Sherlock Holmes” with Robert Downey Jr. credits the response to Beth to executive producer Taylor Sheridan, who co-created “Yellowstone” and is its principal writer.
“Taylor writes women with great love, but with great complexity,” Reilly said. “They are unapologetic. Men are never written as strong male characters. They’re just themselves. It was that attitude and energy that Taylor wrote in Beth and all of her toxic fabulousness. As an actor, it got my blood up. As a woman, it got me intrigued. There’s a recklessness in her that I find exciting.”
She added: “It was a quality that did not come easy for me. How do you play a woman like that and also get people on her side? If you just hate or disregard her, I have not done my job properly.”
The two main men in Beth’s life beside her father are her husband, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) — Dutton’s main ranch hand, who she fiercely loves — and her brother Jamie (Wes Bentley), who she openly despises. Beth has never forgiven Jamie for an incident when they were teens when he took her to get an abortion and, unbeknownst to her, arranged for her to be sterilized.
Beth continually reminds Jamie of her life’s mission to punish and destroy him. Their toxic relationship was exposed in the first season when they violently brawled inside a barn.
Said Bentley: “Beth is extreme, and for Kelly it was quite a long distance to go because she’s the opposite — sweet. She’s gone further in this role than I think even she felt was possible. That fight scene was the moment where I saw that click, fully formed. It’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve seen as an actor.”
Both performers feel that a twisted kind of love is at the core of the dynamic between Beth and Jamie.
“Kelly and I agree that there has to be some desperate desire for connection,” Bentley said. “We’ve also seen it as something that they were striving to repair. It might be revealing itself to actually be that love is lost, that connection is gone, and the painful part is that they are realizing it through the fight.”
He added: “To get there as an actor with another actor, to go as far as she has to go as Beth going after Jamie, we have to trust each other to a degree that goes beyond even friendship. We can let loose on each other, and Wes and Kelly are going to be OK at the end of the day. We just naturally had that from the beginning. We get along so well. That allows us to really dig into this hatred. And there is real hate.”
During the interview, Reilly discussed the popularity of “Yellowstone,” her relationship with her male co-stars and the difficulties her character will face this season.
