Ali Larter on the Privilege of Playing Landman’s Angela Norris
Taylor Sheridan just might have the Midas touch. Everything he writes turns to gold—erm, I mean television streaming success—starting with the cultural phenomenon Yellowstone, the 3 billion–dollar franchise that spawned two successful prequel series (1883 and 1923) and single-handedly revitalized the Western genre. The writer, producer, director, and actor has created his very own “Taylorverse,” which now includes two more mega hits for Paramount+ in Tulsa King and the A-list-packed Landman about the dangerous world of the booming oil industry in West Texas. The latter was just green-lit for a third season after viewership of its premiere episode from season 1 to season 2 increased by over 260%. What’s Sheridan’s secret sauce? Ali Larter has an idea.
The actress dials into our Zoom call from her luxurious bed in Idaho. After a Landman season 2 press run that consisted of three countries and seven hotels, there’s no place like home and no place she’d rather be right now than cozy in her own bed wearing “sweaties”—a very chic white set—and decompressing for the holidays.
As the fiery Angela Norris in Landman, the mother of two and spitfire wife to Billy Bob Thornton’s cynical Tommy, Larter is a fan favorite with women everywhere, who praise her character for being ballsy and unapologetically herself. That, Larter tells us, is one of Sheridan’s key ingredients, writing incredibly dynamic and authentic women who people all over the world can relate to. It’s also the reason the 49-year-old fought so hard for the role. It’s not often you see older women as bold and sexually confident as Angela portrayed on-screen. Larter brings both spice and a heart of gold as the show’s matriarch.
For our latest installment of Portrait Sessions, we chat with Larter about finding herself in Angela, going toe-to-toe with Thornton, and honing a ’90s Calvin Klein aesthetic for her latest press run.
You’ve talked about really fighting for your role in Landman. Why were you so keen to be a part of the Taylor Sheridan universe?
I think that he’s just a brilliant storyteller. There’s something that I deeply respect in him for leaving Hollywood and forging his own path and for someone who rolled the dice and was just writing and found a way and a trust and belief in himself to live a life as an artist and tell the stories the way he wanted to tell them. That’s incredibly rare and is very hard to do in our industry when there’s always so many different people putting in their thoughts and ideas that end up diluting a vision.
With this show and with this character, it was just very exciting for me to play a woman my age who is so bold and so provocative and so broken. He really writes scenes where there’s moments of high comedy and borderline satire, and then we have these really deep moments that are very simple. … As an actor, it just stretched me in so many ways, and it’s pushed me to the next place. I didn’t know that would happen, but I did know that working with talent of that level, you just rise. My scene partner… Working next to Billy most days and everyone—Michelle [Randolph] and Jacob [Lofland], Demi [Moore], Andy [Garcia], Sam Elliott… Working with him this season was a dream. … He’s got the crew that’s just the best of the best, and everyone there is just game on and working at the top of their game. It’s just been incredible to be in that environment as an actress.
What do you think it is about his storytelling that really resonates with audiences? Obviously, it’s working.
I think that it starts with incredibly dynamic characters. I think that everyone’s messy. When I say broken and flawed, he always digs that in, and he also provides sheer entertainment. It’s not just one prestige, heavy drama that’s going to maybe win a thousand awards but then be seen by a small group of people. He has a way of connecting with audiences. I think the greatest surprise to all of us was that our little show in a small part of West Texas became this international sensation. I don’t know how else to say it. We’re humbled by it. We’re blown away by it, and I think that it comes down to the way that he writes the families and that everyone can relate to that. I also feel that, specifically to our show, he’s never had so many tones ever. The fact that we’re going from a very serious, intense romantic scene to a scene of satire to an action sequence, he really keeps the audience engaged, and that’s his storytelling.
It keeps us as the audience on our toes and all of you actors on your toes. Angela is such a juicy, fun character. What did you love about her on the page?
When I first started auditioning, it was only four pages, and it was the first FaceTime scene, and even in that, I remember they have this do-si-do. Angela and Tommy are always playing a game with each other, and you never know if it’s going to be a fight or a laugh or a kiss. I felt like that was very real in relationships. It never just takes one trajectory, and it goes [up and down] in a roller-coaster way.
I think I auditioned with 19 pages, and what was really important for me was doing the big monologue in episode 3 [of season 1], where it shows [Angela and Tommy’s] history about the boom and the bust and how he fell into a bottle. She’s got these two young children and doesn’t have a higher education and has to figure out how she’s going to survive and take care of her young kids. I think that really shows the depth and the pain that they have in their relationship, but it also shows they were just true loves that got broken—as it does in life so many times—and that she’s finding her way back to him and leaving this life of luxury and safety to go back to where she belongs, to where she’s from, to who she wants to be as a woman right now.
Angela is a fiery character, but she also brings so much heart to the show as the family matriarch. As a mother of two yourself, was it easy for you to pull from your own experiences to tap into her?
As an actress, I go into my toolbox, and you figure out that some things are just an immediate, easy thing to go to, and other things just feel like a really huge stretch. For me, it’s figuring out how I can connect with that on a personal level to then transfer it into what I’m portraying in the scene and also within the whole show because it’s a piece of me, right? With my own kids, where I connect is that I’m just a really fierce, loving mama that would move heaven and Earth for my children. I remember when I had our son, and my sister wrote me this long letter saying, “In this world, you’re the only one that will always, always, always be there for him no matter what, and that is your job now.” It brought something out in me, becoming a mother. Then let’s put that on a rocket ship and send it into the world of Landman. It’s things like that. But my kids are much younger, so the partying and talking about getting a guy, that’s what she thinks is the best way for Ainsley. I think that Angela does wear her heart on her sleeve, and she does always have the best intentions. They just go awry quite often.
Angela and Ainsley are such a fun duo together, especially in season 2. Was it easy building that dynamic with Randolph?
I’ve spoken about this a bunch, but the first season was incredibly challenging. No one’s there holding your hand. You’re not finishing and hearing your work is amazing. You’re just out on a limb. We were all just trying to figure out what the family dynamics looked like [and] the different tones [and] how that fit in the show and Taylor’s vision because you’re not seeing any of it, and you’re not seeing the scenes before or after you. I didn’t know what Jacob was doing, and the scenes around me, some things felt like a [John] Cassavetes movie, and then you’re shifting into this Western frontier. Me and Michelle, we lived in the same apartment building, and we really were just there for each other. We also had long stretches where we weren’t working. We’d work and have a week off. I’d fly home to my kids and then come back and be with her. It was just figuring out how to do this show and be a mom and a wife and a daughter and all those things, which every working mom faces those challenges.
But Michelle and I just had really instant chemistry. Taylor’s really taken her under his wing, and he’s putting her with Helen Mirren and these extraordinary actors, and she’s just naturally gifted. She is all heart. She’s so kind and sweet. She’s incredibly fun. She’ll be one of my best friends for a lifetime. She’s such an ace in the hole.
Thinking back, do you have a favorite scene that you have done together?
I think it’s all the stuff in the old folks home because that’s when it really opened up for us. It’s fun, and I think we feed off each other with that. An energy happens when we start really playing and having fun, and that’s what we really do with the old folks. That whole storyline is based on Taylor’s wife, Nicole, and is actually shot at the home with a lot of the people that are there, so there’s something so special about that story. There’s a great scene—I think it’s episode 5—where they throw me a birthday party, and you get to really see through Angela how much these people mean to her life. As an actress, I’m always looking for those moments in some of these scenes where it’s just so big or so emotional. … Where can I find a place where I can break through that noise and ground it and deeply connect? That’s always what I’m looking for, moments of deep connection on the show.
That has to be the same with Thornton and that dynamic between Angela and Tommy, which is always explosive, or you don’t know where it’s going to go. How is that working with him and creating that push and pull?
He’s amazing. It was a different process for me coming in because he doesn’t rehearse. You’re thrown to the wolves is what it feels like, so for me, that’s where my preparation with the dialect coach and my acting coach and breathing and keeping myself deeply calm [comes in] so that I can go in and really be firing for whatever he’s bringing at me. Also, we talked a lot about the fact that this is a TV show. It only takes place over a couple months, even into the second season. It’s a short amount of time, but we wanted this couple to not just be caustic and fighting all the time, so we found ways to deliver lines and to live really outside of the lines. It’s things that we’re saying to each other often. We’re thinking something else. It’s just like a constant ping-pong game with him. I’m just really lucky that I get to work against someone who’s just so extraordinarily authentic.
Angela has a lot of these big monologues in the show. Was there one that made you particularly nervous knowing it was coming up?
I think the Bolognese scene—episode 5 in the first season—where in the middle of making my toast I’m thanking God. I was like, “How the hell am I going to do this?!” I just had to find a way that she’s so lost in this moment, and then she’s thanking God, and it’s all just living and breathing around her. When we’re doing those family dinner scenes, there’s such a support system around me. You really see the dynamics of the family with the kids, [Cooper] and [Ainsley], and then [Tommy] is always provoking Angela, and then Angela explodes, and then she cries, and it’s just, What is this cycle that they’re doing?
I think that’s where the white truffle scene in the first episode of season 2… You see that he’s talking about her hormones, and no woman wants that discussed at the dinner table, and she can go zero to 100. Where I think you see us starting to grow is that we’re sitting on the floor after, and we can’t even look at each other because we’re so embarrassed by our behavior, and we’re trying to figure out who we are if we don’t have this. And then he finds out that terrible news about his mother, and they’re just quiet together. I feel like we’re finding all these ways to show how they can relate to each other and how much of it is [that] the dinners are Angela’s stage. [Tommy] doesn’t want her on that stage, but she wants that stage. It’s so alive.
Going into a second season, when you’re a bit more settled into the character and the tone of the show, what were you excited to explore with Angela and her arc this time around?
I think how much Taylor really leaned into the family this season. Bringing Sam Elliott in and all of us coming together as a family, you really see Angela’s worth, having her tell Tommy she understands old folks now. She’s learned that they’ve made mistakes, and they’re just trying. So she enforces that, as a family, this is who we are, and he’s coming to live with us. You start seeing, really, the value that she has within the family. Are they going to make it? Is this too hard? Is this possible for these two people who love each other so much but always feel like they’re going to spontaneously combust? We really leaned into that. … Also, one of the hardest scenes I had was with Ainsley leaving for college. That was one I was dreading for a long time because there’s no little, soft tear on our show. Angela feels things so deeply, so it was a full six hours of just ugly sobbing with her daughter leaving. I really tapped into a lot of my friends who are now empty nesters and that it feels like a loss to them. All these moments that [Angela’s] having, I come back and I go, “How can I get to this emotional place that is authentic and true and painful and real and ugly?”
Season 1 was a huge success. Did you feel any pressure because of that going into season 2?
I think actors, in general, are all nervous and high anxiety and insecure. I really do. There’s moments, obviously, where you don’t feel that way, but I think that when you have an artistic soul, you just feel things a lot. I think we all came in hot, really excited, and then melted down halfway through like, “Nobody’s gonna like this show. There’s so much this. There’s not enough of this. Where’s this?” You kind of all spiral, and then you just keep putting it back into the work. Whatever’s happening, we’re just putting it back into the show. We’re just so grateful because we love making it. I guess that’s never really happened, that we’re like six times what we were the first season. It’s so fun to be a part of a show that families are watching. People in different cities and different countries are connecting with these characters in this family, and I’m enthralled by that. We’re doing this for the audience. We’re making this for people to enjoy.
What was the big response you got to Angela out of the first season?
It’s the women. Honestly, so many women have come up to me, and they love that I’m a woman of age that’s just doing it her way. She’s unapologetic about wanting to be sexy and bold and be with her husband. She’s just incredibly alive in her body, and that they love. It makes them laugh—how she is with her daughter and that she’s not conforming to societal norms. That’s a big thing, and I think there’s a little part of all of us that just wants to be that rebellious in life, but life kind of holds us in a lane. Angela doesn’t really have a lane.
That makes sense. Look at the success of The Hunting Wives. It’s really exciting to see these unapologetic female characters on-screen. I want to talk a little bit about Angela’s style because she’s so fabulous. Can you take me inside the wardrobe fittings for her?
I feel like there were hundreds of hours [of fittings] the first season. I’m not even kidding. We did it for months and then stopped and then started again. It’s so much of that Texas woman who really loves their femininity. Getting that spray tan. She weighs part of the process of making herself feel beautiful, and you see that image. She loves a tight jean. She loves a denim skirt and the push-up bras and color, the oranges and purples and reds. In my everyday life, I don’t wear any of those colors. It’s like denim and a white T-shirt. It’s hard to get me out of that. … Part of the fun in her life is getting dressed and getting ready for whatever the day is going to bring.
I love talking about all the fashion because the diamonds—that was a huge part of it for me. … My girlfriend Alexandra Jules, who does all the jewelry, that was her cross with the diamonds. When I’m around the women in Palm Beach or in Texas, it excites me so much because they just love the layering of the pendants. Whereas when you’re in L.A. or New York, you don’t see that. You wear like one. Not in Texas. So [Jules] made all these pieces for me, and as soon as I get those diamonds on, that’s when I’m like, “Okay, let’s go.”
Speaking of fashion, I have been loving your looks on the press tour for season 2.
Jeanann Williams just knocked it out of the park. We didn’t do that many fittings. It was a quick couple hours for like 17 looks. She really knows how to dial in on who I am and what I feel comfortable in. I love the late ’90s Calvin Klein. That’s the essence of what I love in style. My favorite was probably the burgundy cape with the little bralette and pants. I just loved that. It was so simple but so chic and such an interesting new cut that I hadn’t seen before. It just made me stand a little taller, making sure you are holding yourself in tight. I loved wearing the Libertine with the poems beaded across it. [They’re] like love poems, but they’re not finished, so it’s all these dangling cords, and I thought that was so beautiful and artistic. Just putting on a suit in Berlin felt great to me and those high boots. I loved wearing the [LaQuan Smith] in New York. That’s definitely a very sexy look for me, but it was also the New York premiere, and I loved wearing a New York designer. It’s been really fun. I also have amazing glam teams. I’m not someone who likes to be overly crafted. A looser vibe is more my style, so it’s finding a way to clean that up enough that it’s red carpet appropriate.
I would live in suits. I wore a Galvan one for the first press day because my Fendi zipper broke five minutes before I was supposed to leave. And then I wore a gray Stella McCartney suit with these amazing loafers, and whenever I can wear a loafer, I’m wearing one. That was a strong way that I felt confident going into starting the press because it always is kind of nerve-racking.
Landman season 2 is now streaming on Paramount+.
Photographer: Charlotte Hadden
Stylist: Jeanann Williams
Hairstylist: Rio Sreedharan
Makeup Artist: Valeria Ferreira
Producer: Erin Corbett
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