While Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone has come to an end, his newest show Landman continues to cement the showrunner’s ever-growing legacy of success. Both shows take place in the modern day but explore very different worlds—Yellowstone dove into the complicated relationships between a ranching family, the Broken Rock Indian reservation, Yellowstone National Park, and land developers, and Landman explores the cutthroat world of the oil business in West Texas. Still, Sheridan’s affinity for grounded, realistic storytelling and hardscrabble characters creates throughlines that make his different television worlds feel connected even if their stories do not intertwine.
Another reason for an overall sense of tonal consistency may be that Sheridan often works with the same collaborators. One of those is hair department head Tim Muir. Muir has worked on Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, and Landman, even shaping looks for the Yellowstone series finale. Muir also has experience with big-budget blockbusters, having served as a hair stylist on Spider-Man: No Way Home.
ScreenRant spoke with Tim Muir about his work on the Taylor Sheridan shows Landman and Yellowstone. Muir discussed his favorite looks from both series, his collaboration with actors, and how his department maintained continuity despite long breaks between shoots. Muir even revealed how his own time in Texas helped him craft the looks of characters across Landman’s different social tiers.
Tim Muir Details How Characters Inform His Work On Landman & Yellowstone
Muir Collaborated With Taylor Sheridan & Other Departments While Bringing In His Own Life Experience
You’ve worked on a bunch of shows with Taylor Sheridan at this point. What is your collaboration like with him? How opinionated is he on things in your world?
Tim Muir: Taylor has got his hands in everything. I love the collaboration that we have together. I think it’s important to have a collaboration with your creator, writer, and director. I think it’s important to be able to collaborate and bounce ideas off each other. I would say he definitely has ideas in every department.
Hairstyles are not generally detailed in screenplays. When you get a script, what kinds of things are you looking for to inform how you shape the look of a character?
Tim Muir: How I design a character’s hairstyle is based on who that character is. As far as color goes, I play on skin tone, face shape, and color, but for me, who that character is [determines] how I create a hairstyle for someone. Then, of course, I collaborate with costumes, makeup, and our writer and our showrunner. Everybody collaborates to create an overall look for each character.
Across Landman and Yellowstone, is there a look or a character that you found to be most challenging?
Tim Muir: Most of the styles that we are doing on both shows are modern day, so they’re a little bit easier. [For] the looks for Landman, I’m fortunate enough [to] own a home in Texas, and I have a daughter who’s 17. I kind of know what the high schoolers are doing, and some of my clientele comes from oil money. I know what the elite look like, all the way down to your everyday regular person in Texas, so I kind of have a hand up on what they look like, which is great.
As far as Yellowstone goes, each one of the characters on that show has a very distinct look. Take Beth, for instance. She’s a little bit disheveled in a lot of times, her hair’s a little frizzy and all over the place, and she’s got bangs and hair around the face. There’s a reason for that, and I don’t think a lot of people understand that or realize why.
If you go back and watch the beginning seasons of Yellowstone, you understand who Beth is. You understand where she comes from. She wasn’t raised by her mother. Her mother died when she was young and she was raised by men, so her idea of beauty is kind of what she picks up on television or what she sees in the world. She didn’t have someone who taught her how to do her makeup or how to straighten her hair or whatever that looks like. [With] her bangs and stuff, she’s always kind of hiding. She doesn’t want people to see that she’s vulnerable, and she is. She has that [vulnerability], but she’s also somebody that can’t show that because she has to protect everybody.
For Jamie—Wes Bentley—he’s very put together, so every hair’s in place. He wants to be perfect in every way. Kacey isn’t necessarily Native American or a cowboy. He’s kind of a mix of both, so you don’t get one or the other with him. He’s stuck in both worlds.
For Landman, you’ve got a 17-year-old girl, Ainsley, a cheerleader, [with] long, blonde hair. That’s typical—all of them have big hair. This is Texas. It’s bigger and better in Texas. Angela—Ali Larter—has got a lot of hair and a lot of styles. She’s very over the top, she makes dinner and everything is themed, so her hairstyles are themed to the dinner parties that she throws. Then, you have Demi Moore’s character, and she and Jon Hamm are oil money in the show. Their characters are very put together and very clean-cut.
I love that you have firsthand knowledge of the culture across all the different types of people in Texas. Were there specific people from your own life that you based any looks on?
Tim Muir: Like I said, I have a daughter that’s 17. She’s in high school and on the football teams and all that stuff, and I’ve been to TCU and know what the cheerleaders look like. I think a little bit of all of Texas is who I base our people on. Texas is a melting pot of people, and we see that in the show as well. Taylor created the characters to be very Texas, and I love that he did that.
There are a few people that I base looks on. I work with a lovely woman named Kit Moncrief. She’s wonderful, she’s very influential in Texas, and they come from oil as well. I looked at her looks and I looked at the people that she is associated with for some of those high society looks, and it’s a lot of old Texas as well. There are those prestigious looks that come from money or come from that older time in Texas, and I love that.
Muir Talks Working With & Against Audience Expectations
Stars Are Easy To Identify, But Muir Tried To Make Some Look “As Different As Possible”
You’re working with people like Jon Hamm, Billy Bob Thornton, and Demi Moore. People kind of expect what they’re going to look like. Does that ever make things difficult for you?
Tim Muir: It does. We wigged Demi in Landman because her hair is that long. It’s all the way to her waist. She’s always going to look like Demi Moore, so we definitely wanted her to look as different as possible. Jon Hamm is Jon Hamm, and he’s known for those clean looks as well. It does make it harder, sometimes, to make someone look as different as possible.
But we’re not in a period piece and we’re not in a fantasy piece or a sci-fi piece. These shows are modern-day, so these people would look like that. You kind of play off of that and then leave it up to the actor. That’s their job—to show that character and what they are. Landman is so good, and I’m so excited for Billy. He’s just up for a nomination at the Golden Globes, so I’m super excited for him. The whole cast is incredible. They’re really incredible to work with, so I’m really grateful.
Yellowstone & Landman Offered Unique Continuity Challenges
An Especially Long Break In Shooting Yellowstone Season 5 Necessitated Inventive Solutions
The story of Landman doesn’t take place over a long period of time, but you shot for months. How much work goes into maintaining a look you’ve created?
Tim Muir: I do most of the colors and cuts. For Ali (Larter) and Michelle (Randolph), their colors, being that blonde, had to be done every week to a week and a half. And [it had to be done] in a healthy way so that their hair doesn’t fall out or break off. For me, it’s a lot of patience, a lot of time, and a lot of making sure that we keep the integrity of the hair as we’re doing those colors for the show.
In the middle of Yellowstone season five, there were the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and there was a really long gap in filming. Did the actors make any attempt to maintain what they had before that hair-wise, and how did you pick up where you left off?
Tim Muir: Because we’re jumping right back into it, there’s not a long period of time between seasons 5A and 5B. And, of course, there was a long period of time before we shot it again. Kelly (Reilly) is a dark auburn, so we had to get her back to strawberry blonde. You’ve got roots that are clear out, and we had to go back to that. And some of our people had super long hair that they couldn’t cut because they were on other shows. Then, you have to get into wigs and get into hair pieces and things like that to create those looks to make sure that they can still keep their other looks as well. Then, some of them just had to go back into cutting.
I have a wonderful team that I work with, and they know how much I am into continuity. We have a specific person who does all of our continuity books on my team, and everybody takes pictures of the people that they do. We really make it a priority, especially when background comes in, to make sure we take their pictures so we can make sure that continuity is on point. \We are also very diligent on back, front, and sides, and making sure that a character, when you see them from scene to scene, looks just like they did the time before.
Muir Shares His Favorite Looks From Landman & Yellowstone
Top Choices Include Ali Larter In Landman & Cole Hauser In Yellowstone
Do you have a favorite look from Landman, if you had to choose?
Tim Muir: I like all their looks. I’m really proud of all of them. I love Angela’s look because she is so over the top. When she does the Bolognese scene where it’s that Italian [dinner], we kind of made her look a little bit mob wifey. She’s got the hair half up and it’s kind of big. Without being cartoony, it’s kind of like what you would see if somebody really wanted to get into that look and spent all day to really bring that to a dinner party. I really love that in her character. I like going back and forth with her to design her looks. It’s fun.
Do you have favorite looks from Yellowstone as well?
Tim Muir: I’m really fond of all the looks on Yellowstone. Cole Hauser looks totally different than he does in real life. He’s a light blonde redhead, and he’s totally dark and tan in this. I love Beth’s look. I think it’s actually really beautiful in all the mess that it is. I love her style. I love the cowboys. I love Teeter’s look—I love dying her hair pink, and she looks like she cut it in a bathroom. I love doing stuff like that. I love Jamie’s look. I love Kayce’s look. They’re all so great.
Because we’ve grown over the last seven years, I have learned to love those looks. I’ve done them for so long, we’ve changed them a little bit here and there throughout, and I think they’ve really grown with the show.
About Landman
From Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace, Landman explores the world of roughnecks and billionaires in the modern Texas oil industry. The series stars Billy Bob Thornton and features Michelle Randolph, Ali Larter, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm.