Warning: This article contains spoilers for Landman’s season 2 premiere, “Death and a Sunset.”
Billy Bob Thornton didn’t make it out of that fiery family dinner scene in the Landman season 2 premiere unscathed.
The actor tells Entertainment Weekly that he got caught by “a few pieces of shrapnel” from all the plates that were being chucked at his character Tommy Norris by his ex-wife, Angela (Ali Larter), in the hilarious sequence.
“When [Angela] twists off, like she did in that scene, she twists off, and it’s not fun having plates thrown at your head,” Thornton says. “They were either real or they were damn near real, because they were heavy. They felt like plates to me! And I got a few pieces of shrapnel.”
Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Thornton and Larter in ‘Landman’
While he was wounded “a little bit,” Thornton notes that his injuries weren’t anything too life-threatening. “Just little nicks here and there,” Thornton adds.
Tommy found himself on the receiving end of Angela’s well-deserved ire after he repeatedly brought up how her menstrual cycle affects her mood at the dinner table in front of their children Cooper (Jacob Lofland) and Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) as well as his oil pals Nathan (Colm Feore) and Dale (James Jordan).
The breaking point, however, was when Tommy questioned Angela’s ability to make rational decisions during her cycle, prompting her to pick up the table cloth and yank his plate of truffle-dusted cacio e pepe toward her. The rest of the evening’s guests, naturally, quickly fled the scene as Angela began to throw pasta-filled plates against the wall and scream at her ex-husband for his callous remarks.
Larter tells EW that Angela’s dinners are both a way to prove her worth to the family and also to get a rise from Tommy, who is “always just poking and prodding her.” In the scene, he eventually managed to successfully diffuse the situation by complimenting Angela’s chest, which charmed her enough to pause and take a seat on the floor next to him in the now-wrecked dining room.
“What I think is the most interesting thing about that scene is that you have the fight, you have the family dynamics, and then it was this choice to leave the table and sit on the floor with both of us facing forward,” Larter says. “Because they couldn’t look at each other in that moment. They were processing who they are as a couple if we don’t go there.”
Facing away from each other also allowed Angela the space to tell Tommy that he doesn’t always have to bring up her cycle all the time to get under her skin. It’s a note that Tommy acknowledged he had not considered until that moment, but would try to take on board moving forward.
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It’s “heightened moments” like those that Larter has really come to treasure while filming the second season. “We get incredible times of comedy and humor,” she says. “You get the violence and the action and the drama, but when you get to dig in and do all of that in one scene, that’s a gift to me.”
It was also just really fun to channel all of Angela’s rage in that scene. “You kind of let it out. You got to let Angela roar,” she says. “And then you go and you question it all night long when you come home after set.”
Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Thornton and Larter in ‘Landman’
But Larter wasn’t the only one having fun on set that day. Lofland notes that it’s hard to keep a straight face whenever the entire Norris family gets to film a scene together. “There are so many outtakes and so many reels of those scenes because we’ll just lose it,” he says. “It’s so great, and everyone’s loose, and we’re having fun.”
“It was such a great scene to watch in person,” Randolph agrees. “[Larter] just went right for it. She’s so bold in that scene. And our props department is incredible, because we had to reset a lot for that.”
And, Lofland adds, the poor pasta sacrificed during Angela’s rampage was actually pretty good. “They actually do make us really good food,” he comments. “It was a waste, but….”
Thankfully, both he and Randolph got to take a bit of the surviving truffle home with them from set that day. “It was such good truffle,” Randolph adds.
The Landman season 2 premiere is streaming now on Paramount+.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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