Billy Bob Thornton ‘Landman’ Interview: Get Your Own ‘Yellowstone’

Billy Bob Thornton is about as rugged, no-nonsense and tough as a leading man gets, and he gets an excellent opportunity to utilize these qualities – as well as his gift for hard-bitten humor – with Farmerthe latest series in the ever-growing Taylor Sheridan TV Universe which premieres November 17 on Paramount+.

As Tommy Norris, an oil company tasked with keeping crude flowing, revenue streams robust and his boss happy, Thornton is at the epicenter of a sprawling saga about the influential and lucrative industry. He exudes a brand of over-the-top roughneck brashness that is at once familiar and characteristic, layered as it is with measures of self-doubt, guilt and regret over the mistakes he’s made and the chances he’s squandered. At once larger than life and insidiously complex, it’s a role that fits him like a well-worn glove, and his performance confirms his talent for playing Southerners with a grandiose attitude and the cojones to back it up.

Thornton first crossed paths with Sheridan thanks to a guest spot on 1883and that concert inspired the mogul to write Tommy specifically for him. The result is a show that feels tailor-made for the 69-year-old headliner, whose main character finds himself plagued by all sorts of dilemmas, be it threats from a Mexican cartel, stress involving his grown children (Jacob Lofland and Michelle Randolph), pressure from his employer (Jon Hammwhose big man is married to Demi Moore), or his ex-wife’s (Ali Larters) attempt to rekindle their flame, regardless of the fact that she is currently remarried.

In many respects Farmer—the story of macho titans trying to maintain their grip on power—is prototypically Sheridan. Still, the actor brings his own force of personality to the case, imbuing it with not only its requisite blisters and biting wit, but also hints of melancholic remorse and dread as Tommy grapples with his rocky past and uncertain future.

Ever since he burst onto the mainstream scene with 1996’s Sling bladeThornton has been one of Hollywood’s most unique performers, so his return to the small screen (after Prime Video’s four-season legal drama Goliath) are more than welcome. On the threshold of Farmers premiere, we spoke with the Oscar-nominated star about beer, oil, music, Texas, Sheridan and his undisputed dominance of Christmas movie season.

Your Farmer The character Tommy is an alcoholic who drinks a lot of Michelob Ultra because, by his account, it has so little alcohol that it doesn’t count as such. This probably reduced your chances of snagging a Michelob commercial, right?

(laughs) Well, I drink Bud Light, so I’m fine.

But it was a really fun thing in there. There are a few scenes throughout the series where the bartender and I spar over the subject of me saying, “I really don’t drink.” There’s this thing that we call the “Nashville sober,” and with a lot of the country music cats that I know down there, they say I quit drinking about two years ago—I just drink wine. I guess they consider it food because Italians do. So when they just drink wine, they think they’re drinking too much because they stop drinking whiskey or whatever.

This is apparently the safe way to handle your alcohol.

You have wine with your meal – it’s just food. But it’s 20-25 percent alcohol (laughs).

Taylor Sheridan wrote Farmer with you in mind. I assume that put a lot of pressure on you to accept the role?

For sure. I had pretty much agreed to it even before I read the first script, to be honest with you, which I’ve only done a few times in my career. I did that with the Coen Brothers once when I did that The man who wasn’t there. They called me on the phone, both were on, and they said, how would you like to play a barber in 1949? I said, yes, I would like to (laughs). You just know the stuff they’re going to do is going to be amazing.

How did this one come about?

With Taylor I had done this cameo on 1883and I liked his style and had a great time down there with my old friend Sam Elliott and Tim (McGraw). Then they premiered in Las Vegas, and as I said, I just had a cameo, but when there are some names in something, they want you all to be there (laughs). So I go up there to Vegas and afterwards they had a dinner and Taylor is sitting next to me and he said I’m writing this show around you. It’s called Farmer. I will write it in your voice. It’s set in the oil business of West Texas in the 2000s, and your character is Tommy Norris, and he’s basically you if you were a farmer.

I was fascinated because you don’t see much of the inner workings of the oil industry in a movie or a TV show. i love Fightthe movie was Rock Hudson, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor, so I thought it had the potential to be. So when I read it, it’s like, well, it kind of is Fightonly more dangerous and edgier. I was all for it, and when I read the first script, he got my vote. It sounded like I was a farmer.

Did that make Tommy an easier role to inhabit compared to a character that was created separately from you?

I believe you want to take on roles that are right for you. I made a joke the other day at a Q&A – well, it wasn’t really a joke, but I said, look, we have lots of Texans, so we don’t need people from other countries playing Texans. And for the same reason, we don’t need to go over there and play Churchill, and if you’re going to make a film about Charles de Gaulle, get a Frenchman, because he’ll be much better than me at it. Because if you put yourself into roles, it will be your strongest work. It just is.

Now, easy to get into and understand? Yes, it was Tommy. Easy to play? No, because you have all these things swirling around you. You’re in the West Texas heat, and you’re doing two- or three-page monologues. It was quite challenging. But at least I was in my own skin., you know?

Was it appealing not only to depict the oil industry and the world around it, but to do so in a complicated way?

These days, pretty much everything is politicized; there’s almost nothing you can talk about that isn’t politicized. The good news about this show is that it presents to you exactly what happened in West Texas in the 2000s, and the names have been changed to protect the innocent (laughs) It’s really just a look into that world. But what this show is really about is the relationships and how people are affected. People who work in the oil industry and then their immediate family and extended family – how it affects all these people and how it affects you.

And getting ripped because Tommy is a ripped guy. The cartel is using part of his land and they say, look, you leave us alone, we leave you alone. These are the interesting characters to play. You don’t just want to play a milk-drinking guy. You want to be a complicated character. That’s the whole idea of ​​acting.

It makes sense.

I tell people, we used to watch movies without an agenda. We just saw the movie. If you see a movie about a serial killer and the movie is great, it doesn’t mean you love serial killers. It just means you thought the movie was great. I think if people see things without an agenda…and sometimes they won’t see it at all because of their agenda. It’s like, take a look in there! You might learn something.

Farmer is not exactly a one-note celebration of the oil industry.

When we have a viable alternative (to oil) that is proven and we can actually do this, I think everyone is for it. That would be great. If they suddenly got to where you could use water to run cars and planes and stuff like that, the oil guys would just get into the water business. They’re a group of business people, so that’s what they’re going to do. But the show isn’t really pro or con when it comes to oil. It’s just, here’s what happened in this story. That’s all it is. But mainly what I hope people get out of this is how relationships work and this kind of world. Because they work this way in every kind of world.

By the way, Farmer is about oil, so that’s obviously the company we’re talking about, but there are many other companies that may need to adjust (laughs). Like the pharmaceutical industry and what a powerful lobby there is in Washington. We’ve seen what happened to that.

You’ve played Texans (and Southerners) before, but with a role like this, did you feel compelled to do research, such as hanging out around oil rigs and oilmen?

For sure. It almost feels like Texans in general, but West Texans in particular, grew out of the ground and into this land like plants. It’s in them, you know what I mean? (laughs) In terms of authenticity, I grew up in Arkansas and Texas; I came to California from Texas in 1980. So I know that world and I know those people. All I had to do was when you do a performance in something, if you don’t know what you’re talking about – if you don’t know what the words mean – then the audience is not stupid. They will catch on if you just recite lines that you have memorized. Some of the audience may not even be aware of why, but they understand.

You are also a musician, both as a solo artist and with your band The Boxmasters, and there is a lot of music in it Farmer. Was there any dialogue about including some of your songs in the show?

It’s funny because sometimes people assume that The Boxmasters, and also my solo days, were country. We only made two records where we said, what if Frank Zappa combined the British Invasion with hillbilly music? We made the first two records as experimental records. But we don’t sound like that at all. We are somewhere between a rock ‘n’ roll and a punk band, which is us these days. I grew up playing something other than rock ‘n’ roll and we just had the two records that did that.

Regarding your question, I keep my music career separate from it. I told Taylor that I never wanted an appearance by me on the show. I think it’s kind of weird, you know? But what I did do was I helped write a couple of songs that I think will be used in the show, and they’re country songs. I’m not a country songwriter, but I wrote it with a country songwriter or two and it was fun to do with them, even though it’s not my bag. I don’t mind having my name on a song with someone else, but in terms of actually putting our band in it, I don’t think I would.

Finally, I have to tell you that in all my years of going to the movies, I have never laughed as much in a movie theater as I did Bad Santa Claus. I thought I was literally going to pee my pants.

(laughs) I appreciate it, first of all, because I laughed like that when I read the script. My wife thought I was crazy. But yes, it has become a favorite every Christmas. I have Love actually and Bad Santa Claus every Christmas and they couldn’t be more opposite.

And by the way in Poor Santa Clausi actually peed my pants in the movie if you remember! (laughs)