Billy Bob Thornton was almost cast alongside Kathy Bates in her Oscar-winning “Misery” role, something that Bates was unaware of until she sat down with Thornton for their Variety Actors on Actors interview.
“I swear to God. Originally, Richard Farnsworth, who played the sheriff, had a deputy. I saw Rob Reiner for it. And Rob said right in the room, ‘You’re the guy. We can send everybody else home.’”
But as the production went forward, the project evolved.
“I was very excited. And I got a call from Rob Reiner — not many directors would do this — he called me and he said, ‘Listen, I’ve been looking at the script and been planning out what I’m going to do with this movie.’ He said, ‘You can come up here and shoot this for the money or the insurance or whatever you need, but I’m just telling you, it’s not going to be in the movie,’” Thornton recalled.
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While he lost out on being a sheriff’s deputy in “Misery,” Thornton did eventually play a marshal in “1883,” created by Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan then crafted an entire series for Thornton, 2024’s “Landman,” which Thornton has previously described as “a more intense, more dangerous, and more humorous version of ‘Giant.’”
“It was almost like reading something I had written for myself,” Thornton told Bates. “It’s been comfortable doing it… sometimes the conditions of what I have to do aren’t very comfortable, and doing monologues as long as your arm.”
Thornton said that when Sheridan starts writing, “he’s not necessarily sure where it’s going to go. He lets the characters and the story take him when he’s gonna write it.” While the cast — which also includes Jon Hamm, Ali Larter, Jacob Lofland, Michelle Randolph, and Demi Moore — barely had a chance to get to know one another before filming started, Thornton insisted the chemistry was instantaneous.
“Now you got all these younger actors coming in, [and] we don’t know them. So I didn’t know anybody except Demi Moore,” Thornton said “We had one cast dinner before we started… They’re all such specific personalities that the chemistry almost happened just because of the force of the personalities.”
The second season of “Landman” will drop in November 2025. Watch Thornton and Bates’ full Actors on Actors piece below:
