‘Landman’ Stars Unpack Those Emotional Moments in ‘Sins of the Father’

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Landman Season 2 Episode 2, “Sins of the Father.”]

Things get very raw and real for the stars of Landman in the second episode of the season, as the show explores the true relationship between Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) and his father, T.L. (Sam Elliott), and then Tommy and Cooper (Jacob Lofland) get some quality time together to hash out their complex history as well.

In the aptly titled “Sins of the Father,” Cooper, reeling from a breakup with Ariana (Paulina Chavez) over her fears of his dangerous oilman lifestyle, decides to join his father on a road trip to see T.L. and make funeral arrangements for his mother. During this, we learn of Tommy’s tragic backstory of being abused by his father and neglected by his mother, who was a drug addict. As it turns out, the reason T.L. is so cranky about enjoying his uninterrupted sunset is that it reminds him of the brightness she once brought to his life.

For Elliott, the emotional resonance of his performance in these scenes of remembrance and regret came straight from the page of Taylor Sheridan‘s script. As he tells TV Insider in the above video interview, “I don’t think about going in. I don’t think about, ‘I’ve got to be emotional here. I’ve got to cry here. I’ve got to do this or that.’ It just comes out of working with great material that calls for whatever it calls for, and Taylor’s brilliant at doing that. He just writes for actors. I don’t know if it’s because he is an actor himself, or if he’s just a brilliant man that understands human nature, he just writes for us. … There’s this old adage, ‘If it ain’t on a page, it ain’t on the stage,’ and it’s on every page of Taylor’s material that I’ve ever looked at.”

Things get even more gutwrenching when, after visiting T.L., Tommy has a mea culpa moment with Cooper over his absence as a father, and, when Cooper forgives him, he breaks into tears for the very first time in this series.

Thornton says he was flooded with thoughts of his own children when crafting that scene, and the burst of emotion was very real as a result of that. “I’ve got sons. I have a daughter. I had a difficult relationship with my dad. I mean, all those things are there. So I used life experience as an actor,” he explained. “Sam and I both are sort of from the just natural out-of-the-ground acting school. We’re not fancy guys. So if I don’t feel like crying, I don’t… There are scenes where maybe it’s supposed to be one thing, and I do another. Sometimes, I’ll bawl my eyes out in a scene that doesn’t say that on the face. In this case, they coincided, and I couldn’t help it, because when you have kids and you’ve you’ve had difficulties and love and joy and everything else you have in a family, when you’re doing scenes about that, you don’t think about it beforehand so much. It’s just that when you’re in the middle of it and you’re talking to someone — when Jacob was talking to me — you can’t help it. I mean, you go there. And Taylor writes very natural stuff, and he hired a bunch of natural actors, I mean, that whole cast… he knew what he was doing there.”

Elsewhere in the episode, we get to see Rebecca (Kayla Wallace) put on another clinic and leave a room full of suits on their tails again, much to Nathan’s (Colm Feore) chagrin; Angela (Ali Larter) and Aysnley (Michelle Randolph) have another old folks home adventure that lands them in the custody of Sheriff Joeberg (Mark Collie); and Boss (Mustafa Speaks) is given a potentially problematic new assignment. In the video above, see the stars of Landman break down all of these scenes are more!

Landman, Sundays, Paramount+