• Sam Elliott, 81, stars as T.L. Norris in Landman season 2 alongside Billy Bob Thornton in the Taylor Sheridan series, and says audiences are gravitating toward the show as an antidote to modern stress — they want to “escape the ‘s—‘ in the world today”
• Elliott says his character’s physical decline and frailty feel “very true” to his own experience: “I’m just old and I’m still lucky to be working,” he told Variety — a line he delivered after reportedly being called “iconic” at a Directors Guild event
• Despite six decades in Hollywood, Elliott says he is still learning from his Landman costars, and frames the show’s appeal around character-driven storytelling and comfort entertainment rather than spectacle
• The Oscar-nominated actor reflected on one of season 2’s most emotionally resonant storylines involving aging and physical vulnerability, saying the material mirrors his own lived experience

Sam Elliott has never been one for self-congratulation, and that hasn’t changed in his ninth decade. The actor, 81, is in the middle of a late-career run that has introduced him to a new generation of fans through Landman — the Taylor Sheridan oil-patch drama that has become one of the most-watched shows on Paramount+ — and he has a theory about why the show connects the way it does.

“Escape” is his word for it. In an interview with Fox News, Elliott said fans are flocking to Landman to get away from the noise — to escape the “s—” in the world today. It’s not a complicated theory, but coming from Elliott, who has spent 60 years playing characters who don’t explain themselves much, it lands.

The show’s second season cast Elliott as T.L. Norris, a character whose age and physical decline are written into his bones. Elliott told Variety that the frailty feels personal. “What I feel like is that I’m just old and I’m still lucky to be working,” he said — a response, delivered without apparent irony, to people at a Directors Guild event who were describing him as “iconic.”

Still Learning

One of the things Elliott keeps coming back to in press for the season is how much he’s absorbed from his costars. Six decades into a career that spans Mask, Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, and an Oscar nomination for A Star Is Born, he says he’s still picking things up on set — a posture that fits neatly with both his reputation and the kind of grounded performance Landman requires from him, per People.

T.L. Norris is not a glamorous role. It asks Elliott to play vulnerability alongside Billy Bob Thornton, who anchors the series as roughneck fixer Tommy Norris. It’s working. The show has been renewed, the numbers are strong, and audiences, by Elliott’s read, are glad to have somewhere to land.

The post Sam Elliott, 81, Says ‘Landman’ Fans Are Tuning In to Escape the ‘S—‘ — and His Character’s Frailty Hits Close to Home appeared first on Cream.

• Michelle Pfeiffer revealed there was no plumbing, no AC, and no food on The Madison’s remote Montana set
• The 360-degree shooting style meant no trailers could be parked nearby, leaving cast exposed to the elements
• Pfeiffer signed on to the show without reading a single page of script, on the advice of Helen Mirren
• Season 2 has already been filmed, and Paramount+ has already renewed the show for a third season
• The Madison became Taylor Sheridan’s biggest-ever series launch, hitting 8 million global views in its first 10 days

Michelle Pfeiffer is not here to sugarcoat it. The Madison may be one of the most gorgeous shows on television right now — but behind that sweeping Montana scenery? No bathroom. No air conditioning. No food. And, if you can believe it, not even a real outhouse.

The Golden Globe-winning actress opened up about the surprisingly rough conditions on the set of Taylor Sheridan’s hit Paramount+ drama during an appearance on the LA Times’ In Conversation podcast, painting a picture that’s a long way from the usual Hollywood star treatment.

“You may as well be in a tent because, you know, there is no bathroom,” Pfeiffer said. “Even the outhouse is not real. So there’s no AC, there’s no plumbing, there isn’t anything. But it is breathtakingly glorious.”

The reason for the stripped-down setup comes down to the way the show was shot. Because production filmed in 360 degrees — capturing the full expanse of the Madison River valley — there was simply nowhere to hide a row of trailers without them ending up in the frame. So they didn’t have any. Which meant no place to sit, no nearby restrooms, and no craft services to speak of.

“We didn’t really have trailers there because they were shooting 360 degrees, so they couldn’t have a bunch of trailers around,” Pfeiffer explained. “There was really no place for us to sit. There was no bathroom nearby. There was no food. And in the winter, it was cold. It was like, ‘Could we have a heater?’ And in the summer, it was like, ‘Could I get an umbrella because the sun’s really intense?'”

She said it took until “about halfway through” filming for the cast and crew to get the situation sorted out.

The cabins along the river where her character’s husband Preston (Kurt Russell) and his brother Paul (Matthew Fox) lived were purpose-built for the show — constructed from scratch on open land with no infrastructure underneath them. Beautiful to look at. Less beautiful to work around.

It Was a Leap of Faith From the Very Beginning

The rough conditions were almost fitting, given how unconventional Pfeiffer’s path to the show was in the first place. Sheridan approached her about the project before a single word of the script had been written — because that’s how he works. He wanted to know who his cast was before he started putting words on the page.

“He said, ‘Well, I’d like to know who I’m writing for before I start writing. So after you commit,'” Pfeiffer recalled. That did not sit well with her initially. “I said, ‘Okay, when could I read something?'” The answer, essentially, was: never — not until she was already in.

She told Entertainment Weekly at the show’s New York City premiere: “I committed to it without even having read anything. It was really just [Sheridan] explaining the scope of the character and kind of the outline of where it was going. We went back and forth over a couple of weeks like that, and then I realized I wasn’t going to win this argument and I was either going to have to commit or give it up.”

What finally tipped her over the edge? A phone call with Helen Mirren. Mirren had starred in Sheridan’s 1923 and had nothing but glowing things to say. “She just glowed; she couldn’t say enough nice things,” Pfeiffer recalled. “She said the scripts were great, the productions were perfect. She was having the time of her life; she loved Montana. So I took a big leap of faith, and I committed. I thought, ‘Well, the guy has a pretty darn good track record.'”

What’s Coming in Season 2 — and Beyond

In The Madison, Pfeiffer plays Stacy Clyburn, the matriarch of a wealthy New York family who uproots everything and heads to rural Montana after the death of her husband. It’s part family drama, part grief story, part sweeping romance — the decades-long love story between Stacy and Preston serving as the emotional spine of the series.

The show became Sheridan’s biggest-ever series launch, pulling 8 million global streaming views in its first 10 days. Season 2 was filmed back-to-back with Season 1 — a deliberate move to lock in Russell’s involvement while they had him — and Paramount+ has already handed the show an early Season 3 renewal.

Russell has teased that the stakes get higher in the next chapter. “Things begin to become dangerous in realistic ways,” he told Variety. And Pfeiffer offered her own preview: Season 2 picks up “after the initial stage of raw grief passes, and some time has gone by.”

“It’s the messy and profound rebuilding of everything that you knew after everything that you knew has fallen apart and what that looks like,” she said.

Pfeiffer isn’t the only Sheridan star who’s had to earn her paycheck the hard way. Cole Hauser, who stars in the Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch, recently told Variety that filming in Texas during the summer was its own kind of ordeal. “It was 118 degrees, and you’re in all black, sitting on a horse. The trailers aren’t 200 yards away — they’re miles away. So you’re out there in the elements.”

Apparently, if you want to work in the Sheridan universe, you come prepared to suffer for the scenery.

Season 2 of The Madison is expected to premiere either late this year or in early 2027. Season 1 is streaming now on Paramount+.

The post Michelle Pfeiffer on ‘The Madison’ Set: No Bathroom, No Food, No AC appeared first on Cream.

• Dutton Ranch premieres May 15 on Paramount+ and the Paramount Network, following Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler’s fresh start in South Texas
• The series debuted with an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score — already outpacing the original Yellowstone’s 83% average
• Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser are joined by Ed Harris, Annette Bening, and Finn Little in the new cast
• Critics praised the polished production, ensemble performances, and long-term storytelling potential
• The show has been described by fans as the effective \”Yellowstone Season 6\” — and critics seem to agree it earns that title

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Beth Dutton is back. And this time, she’s in Texas.

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Dutton Ranch, the newest spinoff from Taylor Sheridan’s ever-expanding Yellowstone universe, premiered Friday on Paramount+ — and the early word from critics is that Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser have delivered something worth getting excited about. The show currently holds an 86% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, which puts it ahead of the original Yellowstone‘s 83% average across five seasons. Not bad for a spinoff that started from scratch — literally.

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The series picks up in the aftermath of a wildfire that tears through Dutton land in Montana. Beth and her husband Rip (Hauser) watch their lives burn in the rearview mirror of a pickup truck, then do what Duttons do: they rebuild. Within a month, they’ve relocated to Rio Paloma, South Texas, where the family name carries zero weight and Beth has to practically beg a slaughterhouse to process her few head of cattle. It’s a humbling reset for one of TV’s most ferocious characters — and apparently, it works.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=19I5a1tRt98%3Ffeature%3Doembed
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What Critics Are Saying

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Richard Roeper at RogerEbert.com wrote that the show “sets up a half-dozen storylines with long-term potential,” which is exactly what you want to hear from a franchise that lives and dies by its slow burns. Angie Han at The Hollywood Reporter called it “a tangle of storylines that land ever slightly more often than not.” Michel Ghanem at TheWrap described it as “more polished” with a “promising cast,” while Rebecca Nicholson at the Financial Times simply called it “full-bodied, soapy TV fun.” J. Kelly Nestruck at The Globe and Mail noted “some swell performances.”

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Not everyone is fully on board. John Anderson at the Wall Street Journal landed the sharpest jab, writing that “there’s no one to like on Dutton Ranch” — though fans of the franchise might consider that a feature, not a bug. Beth Dutton has never exactly been easy to love. That’s the whole point.

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When the first five reviews dropped, the show briefly held a perfect 100% score. It’s since settled at 86%, which still puts it in genuinely strong company within the Yellowstone universe. For context: 1923, the Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren prequel, leads the franchise at 94%, while 1883 — the Tim McGraw and Faith Hill origin story — sits at 89%. Dutton Ranch is comfortably ahead of the flagship series that started it all.

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A New World, a Familiar Obsession

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What makes the spinoff feel like a true continuation rather than a cash grab is how faithfully it carries the franchise’s central preoccupation: land. Not just owning it, but being owned by it. “The sky doesn’t stop here,” Beth marvels at one point, staring out over Texas hill country — and it reads less like a line of dialogue than a thesis statement for the entire Sheridan enterprise.

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The show reunites Reilly and Hauser with Yellowstone fan favorite Finn Little, while adding a formidable new supporting cast. Annette Bening plays Beulah Jackson, the powerful owner of a rival Texas ranch who makes it clear the Duttons aren’t welcome. Ed Harris brings his particular brand of weathered gravitas to Everett McKinney, described as a kindhearted veteran who’s supposedly put his violent past behind him. Australian actor Jai Courtney and country singer Morgan Wade round out the ensemble.

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The official synopsis sets the stakes plainly: “Rip Wheeler and Beth Dutton gamble everything on a new life in South Texas, but the promise of building a future far from the ghosts of Yellowstone quickly collides with brutal new realities and a rival ranch that will stop at nothing to protect its empire.”

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Sheridan even works in a Teddy Roosevelt reference — because of course he does. The Dutton universe has always been less about cowboys and more about a very specific theory of America: that the land is finite, that someone is always trying to take yours, and that the only answer is to hold on harder. Shady criminals, secret pasts, vigilante justice — it’s all here. But so is that sweeping, almost pornographic sense of space that made the original series appointment television for millions of people who’d never set foot on a ranch in their lives.

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The first two episodes of Dutton Ranch are streaming now on Paramount+, with the series also airing on the Paramount Network at 8 p.m. ET/PT. New episodes drop weekly through July 3rd.

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Beth Dutton in Texas. Critics are in. The land is calling.

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“category”: “TV

The post Dutton Ranch Reviews Are In — And It’s Already Beating Yellowstone appeared first on Cream.