Welcome to My Favorite Scene! In this series, IndieWire speaks to actors behind a few of our favorite television performances about their personal-best onscreen moment and how it came together.
The best scene “Landman” Season 2 is one of its quietest; it’s also the last scene of the recently concluded season, one that sums up everywhere oilman Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) and ex-wife/current lover Angela (Ali Larter) have been — and hints at where they might be going. Although a great deal of the series’ entertainment value comes from Tommy and Angela’s constant verbal sparring, the season finale ends with the two of them watching a sunset together and reaffirming their love, yielding a deeply moving scene made all the more powerful by how rare such moments are in the world of “Landman.”
Actor Billy Bob Thornton knew when he read the script that the scene would be special, particularly because it allowed him and costar Ali Larter to take a break from their usual high-intensity bickering. “The scene was there, we both understood it,” Thornton told IndieWire. “Ali and I have so many scenes where we’re at each other — a lot of funny scenes or argumentative scenes — so we always relish it when we get to do just two people who know and love each other, and get serious for a minute.”
The beauty of the scene is visual as well as emotional, with magic hour light that gives Thornton and Larter a glow as they tell each other how they feel; that light created added pressure for the cast and crew, however, as they raced to shoot the scene before the sun went down. “It was the end of the day, and they were rushing for the light,” Thornton said, adding that it was also an extremely windy day for a scene that required a certain amount of stillness and quiet.
Thankfully, Thornton and Larter were able to complete the scenes with only a couple of takes. “We really had it the first time.”
In the scene, Thornton and Larter convincingly project a sense of shared history, though ironically Larter was one of the co-stars Thornton had the least interaction with before “Landman” began. “Sam [Elliott] and I go way back,” Thornton said. “Andy [Garcia] and I go way back, Demi [Moore] and I go way back. But I didn’t know Ali at all.” Yet the moment Thornton met Larter and spent time with her at a cast dinner a few days before shooting Season 1, he knew there was chemistry — and he said that kind of chemistry can’t be manufactured.
“Chemistry can’t be taught or learned, it just has to be there,” Thornton said. “Our relationship in life is not a hell of a lot different. She’s a fireball, and you know what I am. Our personalities matched for the characters, and we had it from the very first moment. The first scene I did with her was a FaceTime call, and we even had chemistry on that FaceTime call. I could have been dealt a different hand and it could have been somebody where we didn’t have that,” said the Emmy-nominated actor. “It happens every now and then, and that’s when you’ve just got to dive deep and think about baseball.”
Beyond chemistry, Thornton said the power of his scenes with Larter comes from the fact that they simply listen to each other. “We have a very easy time doing that,” Thornton said. “It’s about listening to the other person and not looking at them as an actor playing a part, but a real person you listen and respond to. You have to be connected. If you’re just saying the words, audiences aren’t stupid — they can feel that. So we always make sure to stay connected and be aware of our history all the time, that this is not new — it’s something we’ve been doing for years and years.”
For a scene like their final sunset conversation, Thornton said it’s also imperative not to break concentration, no matter what is happening around the actors. “The main thing Ali and I do is always keep a connection with our eyes,” Thornton said. “Maybe not for the whole scene, but at certain points we always make eye contact and stay in that, and it’s really intense.” For Thornton, the ideal is to get to a point where it no longer feels like acting — something he and Larter achieved in that pivotal scene.
“I know we never felt like we were in a scene,” Thornton said. “When they call ‘cut,’ you don’t go out of it. I would just stand there at the fence, and Ali too. We just stood there in that space and didn’t get out of it. We let everybody run around and do their things to get ready for another take, but for us it was just one of those scenes where you need to stay connected the whole time until you’re done with it.”
“Landman” Season 2 is now streaming on Paramount+.
