← The Official Yellowstone Podcast
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- [00:10]
Jefferson White
Hello. Welcome back to the official Yellowstone podcast. A very, very happy holiday to you and thanks for being here. My name is Jefferson White. I play Jimmy on Yellowstone, and I'm joined, as always, by Jen Landon Teeter.
- [00:24]
Jen Landon
Hey, Jeff.
- [00:24]
Jefferson White
Jen, thanks for being here.
- [00:26]
Jen Landon
Yeah, it's nice to be here.
- [00:28]
Jefferson White
So whatever holiday it is you celebrate, we're so grateful that you're celebrating with us. Thank you for being here. We're gonna jump into it and keep catching up after this quick break.
- [00:50]
Jen Landon
Jeff, are you a holiday person?
- [00:55]
Jefferson White
You know, I don't think of myself as a particular holiday person, but I love gathering. I love seeing my family. I love gathering with family. So that's. That's a benefit of it.
- [01:03]
Jen Landon
I love the family aspect and I love the coming together aspect.
- [01:06]
Jefferson White
I would say that you have a sort of Christmas energy year round. Maybe that's, you know, the joy and sort of good humor with which you greet the day. It's always Christmas in your heart, I would say. One of the great things about this show is the community, obviously. And we do absolutely cherish the community of the show. And after five years, the community of this show feels like a family. Like, I've been talking about Yellowstone with my Instagram followers for five years, which is, I think, like, authentically a really beautiful thing. There's like a lot of the way in which, you know, the conversation on social media allows us to connect with people, is an incredible gift.
- [01:43]
Jen Landon
Yeah.
- [01:43]
Jefferson White
So what we wanted to do as part of this extra special super fan episode is include some questions that we see recurring on social media. So, Jen, if I may, may I pose to you a question?
- [01:56]
Jen Landon
Yes, Jeff, may I pose the same question back to you?
- [02:01]
Jefferson White
I hope you will.
- [02:02]
Jen Landon
Great.
- [02:03]
Jefferson White
So something you and I have talked about a lot, Jen, something that gets brought up in a lot of interviews if you watch Yellowstone, you know, press and publicity materials. Is cowboy camp the sort of legend of cowboy camp? It's a phrase that we toss around as though anybody know what we're talking about.
- [02:18]
Jen Landon
Right.
- [02:18]
Jefferson White
Jen, will you tell us about cowboy camp? Will you specifically tell us about your experience of cowboy camp?
- [02:26]
Jen Landon
Yeah. Well, Jeff, as you know, I came in season three and I missed out even on that third season, cowboy camp. So you have some epic stories to share after this about the first three cowboy camps. But my first official cowboy camp was going into season four, and it was six days, I believe, of training and different sort of obstacles. Everything from. Everything, frankly, from balancing an egg on a spoon while you ride, that was my least favorite. I'm still mad at that event to sorting cattle, to racing. And on the final day, we would have a competition and we'd be broken up into teams and we would compete and it would be about who would win. What I do know is that apparently cowboy camp for 1923, or maybe it was for 1883, was this incredibly warm, supportive environment in which people really cheered each other on. And that not the way it is on Yellowstone. It is highly competitive. People are out for blood. I think that we're started out in season one.
- [03:52]
Jefferson White
It started out warm and supportive. We were all, you know, strangers in it together. I think most of the listeners of this podcast know by now that when I started Yellowstone, I had never touched a horse in my life. This was all extremely new to me. And so cowboy camp the first time around was this incredible sort of overnight pack adventure with a mule train. There was a sort of. We had these incredible mule guides who took us up on the side of a mountain and we stayed overnight and just spent our days kind of riding through these mountains, practicing various skills, cooking out by the campfire. It was a really amazing experience, to be honest. We, with a cast iron pan, just sort of cooking, cooking on a campfire. So it really was an incredible sort of immersive experience. And it was also the first time we'd all met each other, you know, so I hopped, I flew in, hopped in an suv, popped out on the other side, and met Jake Ream for the first time. They stuck me on a horse right next to Cole Hauser. My first time on a horse, first time meeting Cole. And we traipsed, traipsed up the side of a mountain to reunite with the rest of the cast who had gotten there the day before. So it was a really wild sort of experience getting to know each other, which, yeah, like, was a huge bonding agent going into that first season. You know, going into the first season of Yellowstone, none of us knew what the show was going to be. We had one script, you know, we had the episode one script. We didn't know what our futures held. It was a real sort of leap of faith for all of us and this sort of shared commitment to this journey we were going to go on, you know, it was a really pretty amazing experience. This was also, you know, it was before Yellowstone was this massive phenomenon this year.
- [05:44]
Jen Landon
Since we didn't get you at cowboy camp and you gotta go down to the 6666. I heard from Taylor, I heard from True, who works for the 6666, that they sort of Put you through. You sort of went through the paces the same way they would working that ranch and that you held your own and then some. And everyone was sort of blown away by you.
- [06:09]
Jefferson White
That's really nice of them to say, really, you know, so season four of Yellowstone, Jimmy gets sent off to the 6666, which was the first time I experienced that ranch. You know, it's an incredible, real working cattle ranch. And the guys who live there and work there are the best in the world. They are. They have sort of made lifelong commitments to this craft, to this culture, and they are the best cowboys in the world. Pretty. Pretty literally. So, you know, for them to have to put up with me demonstrates that. They're also incredibly patient, because these guys, their job isn't to babysit an actor. Their job is to manage the cattle on this ranch. You know, they have an incredible amount of responsibility that they are constantly living up to. So season five of Yellowstone, I regrettably couldn't make it to the formal cowboy camp, which I was terrified about, because the last thing you want to do is tell Taylor that you can't make it, especially because, like, it's such a valuable bonding exercise. But, you know, not unlike Jimmy, I had this experience of going off by myself down to the four sixes with. With Taylor, and participating in a real sort of gathering and branding that they were doing down there, which was amazing. It was the best practice in the world. It was basically, you know, some of the stuff you guys are doing in season five, these massive gathers, massive brandings. It was that without cameras on one of the biggest, oldest cattle ranches in America, you know, so I had the just absolutely transcendently beautiful experience of waking up before the sun rose, you know, loading horses onto trailers, unloading them functionally in the middle of nowhere. The 6666 is the size of a county. It's massive. It's like wilderness in pretty much the truest sense. It's wilderness. And you form this huge cowboy dragnet. And I would look to my left and look to my right, and the sun hadn't risen yet, so I couldn't see anybody else. And I was just sort of riding through the sagebrush by myself with no cameras around, gathering, gathering, you know, cow calf pears.
- [08:25]
Jen Landon
Did you love it?
- [08:26]
Jefferson White
It was a. And I did.
- [08:27]
Jen Landon
Did you love it and do you miss it?
- [08:30]
Jefferson White
I loved it very much, and I do miss it. It was. It was probably the first time I've had on the show. Well, the experience of working on Yellowstone over The last five years where I didn't feel like I was auditioning because there was no one else around. Like, you know, I had. I've never really been on a horse by myself before. I've been supervised by trainers, supervised by our wranglers. This was kind of the first time in my life I was on a horse by myself. And then we did the branding. You know, we did a fucking branding, which is a wild deal that's for laymen like me. I'm, like. In real life, I'm closer to Summer than I am to teeter. You know what I mean? Like, Summer's character is probably the closest analog to me in real life, because she's from out of town and she's never seen this before. So all of a sudden, I'm, like, wrestling with calves on the floor of, you know, this dirt, these dirt pens. It's 300 calf cow pairs. And, you know, you're kind of doing jiu jitsu on these cows, trying to hold them down so they can be castrated and inoculated. It's gnarly. It's pretty metal, to be honest. But it's also our job, you know, so it was a. It was a really unique experience that I probably never otherwise would have had. And that was my cowboy camp for season five.
- [09:42]
Jen Landon
So that kind of brings us to our next question from our audience. But before we get into that, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. So before the break, Jeff, you were talking about these times when we reach something, we hit a moment that is so sort of physically exhausting on some level, that's hard that we've never experienced before. And one of the questions that we got from social media, from the audience was they were curious what our favorite scene was to record and what the hardest scene was for us to record. So I'm wondering if, Jeff, what was your hardest scene and what was your favorite scene? And maybe they are one and the same.
- [10:37]
Jefferson White
Yeah, I mean. I mean, my favorite scenes prior to season four were always the bunkhouse scenes. You know, I really loved working with y'all, who I have really become a sort of family at this point. It's just the opportunity to, like, tease each other and mess around and keep it light was always so fun. On a show that can be so heavy in season four, I got to. I got to sort of have responsibility on the show in a way I never had before. You know, part of Jimmy's journey is that he's a. He is a moron and does not deserve responsibility and sort of hands himself over to people who are take responsibility for him. You know, Rip takes responsibility for him. John Dutton takes responsibility for him. The rest of the bunkhouse does. In season four, for the first time, Jimmy sort of has to take responsibility for himself. And that's also really true of my experience of shooting it, you know, so in season four, we went down to Texas on a splinter unit to shoot at the Sixes. And it was like a. It was like shooting a completely different show. You know, it was like this guerrilla unit. It was a smaller, nimbler crew. Taylor was directing all of it. And it was just this very intimate, different style of filmmaking in which I sort of had a lot of responsibility. Like I had to kind of this. This was. We were making this like, weird little splinter unit movie. And that was an incredible experience creatively because it was, you know, it just mirrors the character's experience. There's this sort of self actualization that Jimmy experiences when he goes down to the Sixes. And I sort of experienced the same thing as an actor. Like, I went down to the Sixes and all of a sudden, you know, I had to run with the football a little bit. And that was a real honor and a challenge and an incredible gift that I'll never forget, like working on that season four, four six's stuff. Me and Cat Kelly were sort of the only actors surrounded by a bunch of cowboys. With Taylor there directing us, we were also moving fast. There is at least one scene that we did, literally one take of one take, one setup like that. The scene when Jimmy drops Emily off at her house and they kiss for the first time. The sun was setting. It was a magic hour scene. And we did one take. One take, one setup done.
- [12:53]
Jen Landon
That's incredible.
- [12:54]
Jefferson White
Which was. Yeah. And it was like that kind of moment, you know, that's like, as an actor. There's a scene, you know, In Yellowstone, Season 5, Ryan describes this big cattle drive as like the super bowl or the grand Old Opry of being a cowboy.
- [13:08]
Jen Landon
Yeah.
- [13:08]
Jefferson White
As an actor, moments like that are sort of our Super Bowl. It's like, hey, you know, there's no time left. This thing's gonna exist forever. Whatever scene we shoot right now is going in Yellowstone and it's going to exist forever. And we only get to do it one time. Roll camera, roll sound. Let's go. You know, so those moments are, like, incredibly exhilarating and exhausting and challenging, but they're really like, why we do this. To a certain extent, that kind of pressure is such a gift because you have no choice but to really live, live in the moment when the moment is so precious. And then the hardest stuff I've shot is like, you know, some, some of these days, like you experienced this over and over again this season. These days when you're really just kind of working the ranch, like, you know, these days when you're driving cattle, when you're, you know, branding like you're work, you're kind of just working a 14 hour day as though you are a cowboy. But there's also a camera, you know, on a long lens just watching your every movement for 14 hours, which, oh, nothing is more exhausting than like doing your job. But you also can't relax for 14 hours because the camera is on you for 14 hours.
- [14:23]
Jen Landon
For me, the most grueling days and the hardest days are different. So the most grueling days are. Yeah, long days pushing cows, no bathroom around. I mean, really, as a female, that's interesting. But they're not my hardest days. Oddly, my hardest days are bunk house days. As much as I'm happy to see everyone, they're my absolute hardest days. Because I am a bit of an introvert, I tend to hang out with people one on one, maybe in groups of three, but in a whole group setting in which, you know, drinking is involved and just merry making, not really a part of my life. So it triggers all of my social anxiety. So those scenes are the hardest for me in some way. And then my favorite scene is the scene I gotta shoot where Teeter asked Ripon John for her job, to keep her job. That was definitely my favorite. Not just because I got to speak to important people.
- [15:35]
Jefferson White
Yeah. And, you know, for listeners of the show, you may know this, maybe it's a little obvious. If your character gets fired off the ranch, you kind of get fired off the show. I hate to say it, but the way TV writing works is if your character's not in the story, you just lost your job. So for Jen, I mean, I can't help but wonder if there's a little bit of an element of, all right, I gotta go in there and I gotta earn my place on this ranch.
- [16:00]
Jen Landon
Taylor. Taylor is luckily really, really considerate because he was an actor himself. I find him to be very considerate to sort of the hell that we can go through. So even in season three, in the river scene where it just looks like I died, he called me beforehand and the first words out of his mouth were, you don't die. And just there is a Caveat to what you just said, which is if you're written, you know, out of the ranch, you would be written out of the show. That holds true for television in general. But the scene with John and Rip, the reason why, like, that hit so hard was I really hooked into something with Teeter for me, in season three, which was that Teeter hasn't had a home since she lost her home as a kid. That she's probably, you know, a sort of nomadic worker living a life that is getting harder and harder to live as society, you know, in time moves forward. And that she feels home for the first time. I imagine she had brothers and that this bunkhouse is basically a minor. Like, it recreates her family dynamic, and she feels home for the first time. So the. And in many ways, working on this show, I felt home for the first time. I'm a vagabond actor. I'm a. I'm a heavy. You know, I'm a lunchbox actor. I recur and then I leave. So this has been home. So it just sort of. It just hit a lot of boxes, you know, for me to connect with. And I like that stuff. Jeff, one of the audience questions was around food. They wanted to know if we were as well fed off camera as we appear to be on camera.
- [17:41]
Jefferson White
Oh, absolutely. They take great care of us. We have the best catering in the world. We have the best craft services in the world. We have the legendary Gator, who's, you know, a myth, a modern myth and a reality at the same time. Yeah, because they feed us great. It's also. It's a show about beef.
- [17:57]
Jen Landon
Right.
- [17:58]
Jefferson White
So we. I've eaten, you know, the top 10 steaks I've eaten in my life were all on the set of Yellowstone.
- [18:06]
Jen Landon
Gator is one of the true magicians of food. I don't really ever want to. I don't think I ever want to get married, but I thought about getting married to Gator. Yeah, I thought about marrying Gator for his food because I think he's from California, but he spent a ton of time in Louisiana.
- [18:29]
Jefferson White
Yeah, via Louisiana.
- [18:30]
Jen Landon
Via Louisiana. So he's, like, got that entire influence in his food. He cooks with a lot of love, and I would say some. And I'm a food snob, and I go out of my way to eat at some of the best restaurants wherever I go, and some of the best meals I've ever had are from Gator.
- [18:52]
Jefferson White
There's a recurring joke on the show, and this is where the fictional Gator and the real Life. Gator diverge. There's a recurring joke on the show, you know, about vegetarianism or veganism that gator can't accommodate that. If you're a vegan on set, gator's going to take care of you.
- [19:08]
Jen Landon
Amazing.
- [19:08]
Jefferson White
Gator's going to make you like, some kind of asparagus taco. That's really going to knock your socks off.
- [19:14]
Jen Landon
Yeah, I'm not vegan, but his vegetables were something that stood out for me as I just. I don't know how he did what he did. They are incredible.
- [19:25]
Jefferson White
Yeah, he's amazing. So we eat great on set. Thank you for worrying about us, though. To that kind audience member who checked in, thanks for worrying about us. We do okay.
- [19:35]
Jen Landon
If you ever feel worried again, just start to pay attention to the angularity in our faces as the season progresses because all of us lose bone structure because we gain weight over the course of the season from the amount of food and the delicious food that is provided to us.
- [19:53]
Jefferson White
Yeah, I will say if you're really good at cooking, you can probably pull it off. I'm terrible at cooking. And the good news is it's really easy to throw a steak in a cast iron pan, you know, sear it quick and easy. That's easy. It's a lot easier than trying to, you know, fricassee an eggplant. So God bless. I respect all lifestyles. I really do. But for me, give me a cast iron pan. Give me a good cut of meat. That's all I need.
- [20:20]
Jen Landon
I'm a. Yeah, I like a skirt steak and a cast iron.
- [20:24]
Jefferson White
Jen, it is always such a pleasure to talk to you. And the fun's not over yet. Right after this message, we've got an amazing conversation with one of my favorite new actors on the show this year, Lily K. Who plays Clara, John's assistant, right after this.
- [20:52]
Jen Landon
Okay, listen, the person we're about to talk to right now, our guest of the day is my new favorite person from work. She is a genius actor, and I am so glad to call her my friend, Ms. Lily K. Who plays Clara Brewer.
- [21:14]
Lily K
Come on now, Jen. That's the best intro ever.
- [21:17]
Jen Landon
Lily, we became such buds.
- [21:18]
Jefferson White
I'm sitting right here. Your new favorite. I feel so usurped. We're starting this out on a bad foot because now I'm in a defensive position.
- [21:27]
Jen Landon
Jeff. There were many times on set where it would be like 2 in the morning. For some reason, it was Lily Finn and I, whose coverage was less, and somehow we all bonded like we were all the same. The Same age, which I don't know.
- [21:46]
Lily K
Whose maturity level that speaks to. I don't know if that's. I think it speaks to that Finn is an incredibly evolved human being.
- [21:54]
Jen Landon
And let's claim the child Finn is too mature. He is just horribly too mature.
- [22:02]
Jefferson White
I mean, speaking of 2:00am the middle of nowhere, freezing cold, Montana. Lily, you got thrown into the middle of it this season. I always can't help but point out when characters on the show parallel the experience of the actor. So here you are, you joined the show in its fifth season. That's a little bit like Clara suddenly getting thrown into this cattle ranching lifestyle. What's up? What's that like?
- [22:28]
Lily K
It's bizarre. I mean, it's the thing of. I was looking at, you know, I was watching the most the couple episodes that just came out and looking at like, man, this girl just is out of nowhere finding herself at the dinner table with Beth Dutton. It's like, that's not. No one is invited into that space and suddenly she is there. And I think in the same way, I think I felt that that was an immense privilege and an immense, like, there's a weight to that, to being able to join this really beautiful community of people who are telling this story in terms of the logistical 2am in the, in the dark, in the, in the mud. That was like what I grew up loving and doing. And so I was so excited. I was like, you mean I get to be on a horse at 2am in the dirt chasing cows doing this? I was like, oh my God, this is the greatest job in the world.
- [23:27]
Jen Landon
Since you hit on it already. And I was going to save it towards the end. Can you talk a little bit more about how much writing experience you had coming in? Because when we first saw you, one of the days that we, you know, we practiced riding in between shooting, we all were like, who is that new wrangler? Like, who is the new professional rider they have brought in? And it was you.
- [23:52]
Lily K
That's very kind, Jen. I was very lucky in that I did not. I was rusty. I had spent some time away, but I've been riding and working with horses since I was about 6 years old. And I obviously, I moved away from anywhere that I would have access to that. And so it's been, it had been a second and that was just the greatest joy. I grew up training a little bit and doing that, all that kind of good stuff. So it was such a, it really was a dream come true to, to get to do that at this work in a tv, movie context.
- [24:39]
Jefferson White
The words you said, joy really radiates kind of through the screen because we don't know how Clara is going to respond to suddenly being asked to be on the ranch, to suddenly participate in this massive gathering, this massive branding. But the way she responds to it is with joy. It really seems like for her, too, it's this homecoming. Sprinting on a horse side by side with John Dutton, my close personal friend, Kevin Costner. You guys are just blazing across the field, talk like that. Joy. What an amazing experience.
- [25:12]
Lily K
Oh, my God. I was a. I was a. Like a happy mess after that, that day of work. I was like, this is my dream. This is so much fun because it's such like standing next to or riding next to a movie, cowboy cinema, cowboy legend, and getting to do something like that. It was like the most. That's exactly who you dream of doing it with. On a horse that you dream of riding in, a place that you dream of being in, of riding in. And it was such a treat. It was like. I couldn't. When I read that, I was screaming. I was like, I can't wait to do this. I'm so excited. It was so much fun.
- [25:53]
Jefferson White
What a neat thing. What a cool experience to go back and forth and to go back and forth alongside Kevin Costner. You know, is there stuff. Stuff that you've. Or experiences you've had, things you've learned from working with Kevin. You've worked with him, you know, not to be jealous, but you've worked with him more in one season than the rest of us have in five. So I hope you had a great time.
- [26:12]
Lily K
Yeah, I had an amazing time. No, it was. I did have an amazing time. I. I felt very sneaky in that capacity. I was like, how is it that I just get to follow him around and hang out with him all the time? This is amazing. But I. He is so. He takes the work so seriously across the board. And I think feeling like something that was such a gift is even just coming in, you know, and being new and, you know, being in the position that I was in, I feel like he was so open and wanted to talk about what we were doing and what it meant.
- [26:50]
Jen Landon
Did you have extra nerves going into this because it was Kevin and then did you find that his sort of nerdy is the wrong word, but I mean, as a compliment, nerdy focus on the process alleviated those nerves completely, I think.
- [27:02]
Lily K
I think I was absolutely terrified. And because you never know when you. When it's somebody who you're working with. Who you've watched your entire life. You don't know what they're going to be like and what, not just as a person, but in a work environment. Like, what do they need? What kind of space do they need? What kind of, you know, how sensitive are they to what's going on around them? And I think I was really worried. But his, first of all, he's so charming, and second of all, he was so welcoming and kind. It was very disarming and it was very. It made me sort of go, oh, I can relax a little bit. But it took me like days of working. I was like having the first few scenes we shot, I was like, I was curled into a ball because I was so nervous about that I was talking to him.
- [27:57]
Jefferson White
So I think those are like dramaturgically valid nerves though, right? Like, I guess that that's what's so cool about this is in real life you're going back and forth between two jobs and in the show Yellowstone, you're meeting that your new boss who is kind of dragging you back and forth between two very distinct worlds. What a cool thing. I mean, you know, the respect that you feel for Kevin isn't so different from the respect that Clara feels for John Dutton. Like, I have no doubt that she's intimidated by like, when you're sitting at the dinner table next to Kelly Reilly, next to these other actors, like, the anxiety that you might experience as an actor lines up perfectly with the anxiety that the character experiences.
- [28:37]
Lily K
Totally. I got so lucky. There are very few scenarios in which my unbridled anxiety is actually relevant to the story that I'm telling.
- [28:48]
Jefferson White
It's amazing. I've appreciated that for five years on Yellowstone now because Jimmy's always a fucking nervous wreck because he doesn't know what he's doing. Which is perfect.
- [28:54]
Lily K
Perfect.
- [28:55]
Jefferson White
It's perfect.
- [28:56]
Lily K
You're like, same. Let's go.
- [28:57]
Jefferson White
Lily, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I cannot wait to see what is in next in store for Clara. I can't wait to see what's next in store for you. I'm a big, big fan.
- [29:08]
Lily K
Likewise. Thank you so much for having me, you guys. It was so fun.
- [29:12]
Jen Landon
And Lily, you're amazing on the show. I know I text you that, but I want to say it so everybody hears it.
- [29:18]
Lily K
Thanks.
- [29:19]
Jen Landon
You are phenomenal on it.
- [29:21]
Lily K
Ditto. Big time to both of y'all.
- [29:27]
Jen Landon
We are looking forward to next week's Yellowstone mid season finale. And we will be back here next Sunday right after that episode with all the details and insight on the show, so make sure you subscribe and tune into Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Happy Holidays, Jeff Happy Holidays, Jen.
- [29:48]
Jefferson White
The official Yellowstone Podcast is a production of 101 Studios and Paramount. This episode was produced by Scott Stone. Brandon Gis is the head of audio for 101 Studios. Steve Razis is the Executive Vice President of the Paramount Global Podcast Group. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Jeremy Westfall, Ainsley Rosito, Andrew Sarnow, Jason Reed, and Whitney Baxter from Paramount. And of course, David Glasser, David Hucken, and Michelle Newman from 101 Studios.