How Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘1883’ Cameo Turned into Starring in ‘Landman’

Billy Bob Thornton’s willingness to jump on a flight led to the role of a lifetime.

During a Q&A session at Farmer screening in Nashville, Tenn., the actor, 69, revealed how series creator Taylor Sheridan wrote the series with him in mind after he agreed to film a brief cameo in 1883.

“Taylor called me one time and said, ‘I wrote a cameo in this thing, I’m doing the call 1883 and would you come to Fort Worth for two days to do two scenes? I need a guy who has done it before. Can you come and shoot everybody in the saloon and leave?'” Thornton recalled Sheridan saying. “And I say, ‘Yes, I can.'”

The Fargo Alun said Sheridan sweetened the deal by adding that he would be able to “hang out” with his friends Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, who were series regulars on the western show. After giving the TV producer a resounding yes, Thornton was also invited to the series premiere in Las Vegas.

After the big event, he recalled having dinner with Sheridan, who revealed: “I’m writing a show for you called Farmer and it’s about the oil business in Texas. It is based on this podcast Boomtown.”

“He kind of explained it to me and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,'” Thornton continued, admitting he was pleasantly surprised by the script. “And then I read it and thought, ‘This is even more interesting than I thought it would be.'”

According to the official logline, Farmerpremiering on Paramount+ on November 16, tells a “modern-day tale of fortune-seeking in the world of oil rigs… an upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wild billionaires fueling a boom so big it’s reshaping our climate, our economy and our geopolitics.”

The series also features Jon Hamm, Demi Moore and Ali Larter.

Speaking with PEOPLE in March, Hamm explained why Landman will be an “interesting” focal point for Sheridan, who is known for telling western stories about cowboys and ranch hands.

“It’s actually not cowboy-oriented at all,” the Mad Men said the alum then. “It’s more in the oil world. It’s based on oil speculators and what they called farmers, who are the guys who run around trying to acquire mineral rights and land rights in hopes of speculating and finding oil.”

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“There’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of intrigue and stuff like that,” Hamm noted. “It’s Taylor Sheridan, and it’s obviously very well written. It’s very well researched. It’s a very well told story and I think it’s an interesting take on what’s going on when it comes to how we get those things that make our cars and our lives and our airplanes and everything in our modern world go.”