It’s no secret that Jamie Dutton is one of the most hated characters on Yellowstone—and certainly the most detested member of the family. As squirrelly and conniving as he may seem, though, actor Wes Bentley, who plays Jamie, points out that, beneath it all, he’s really not so different from you or me.
In a sit-down with Country Living, Wes revealed that one of his favorite experiences from the past six years of Yellowstone—and especially as we embark on Season 5B—is witnessing fans’ cognitive dissonance surrounding their simultaneous disgust and relatability with Jamie.
“[Fans] are sort of identifying with Jamie in some ways, or at least understanding him, and I think that comes from the fact that Jamie, you know, he has secrets,” Wes says. “He’s not really who you think he is; he’s not really who he thinks he is. And I think we all kind of are like that. We all have a version of ourselves that we present to people and then we’ve got all these things inside of us that are secrets or that are part of us that we don’t show. Jamie’s an extreme version of that—and a more broken version of that—but it’s also something we all can kind of identify with.”
While fans may not be able to fully relate to Jamie’s storyline—the back-stabbing, the deceit—most can sympathize with what it’s like to live with your mistakes.
The way Wes sees it, Jamie does have the capacity for remorse, or at least he did prior to Season 5B. Take Season 5, Episode 4, for example. In the episode, Jamie bails Beth out of jail following her aggravated assault arrest and gives her a ride home. While in the passenger seat, Beth notices a car seat in the back of the car, connects the dots, and lights into him about the fact that he has a child and she’ll never be able to due to his actions when they were younger, which left her sterilized. In this moment, Jamie shows his vulnerability and guilt for taking her to the clinic.
“Taking you to that clinic is the greatest regret of my life,” he choked out to her.
“I don’t think Jamie fully understood the consequences of that action even up until that moment,” Wes says. “I think he saw in her how broken it actually was and this is where men get it wrong. You know, it’s like he didn’t understand the depth of what had happened. And I think in that moment, maybe he was starting to.”
Of course, in this instance, his apologies were too little too late—something fans can surely relate to, for while accountability is a necessity, it’s not always a means for reconciliation, and Jamie quickly learned that when Beth threatened (promised, really) to take his son from him. At that point, Jamie had a choice: Labor over making amends with his sister or fiercely protect the family he’s building.
“It doesn’t seem like he’s ready to reconcile anymore,” Wes says. While there was a time when he seemed ready to set his pride aside in favor of his adopted father and siblings, Jamie reached a tipping point in Season 5A and Wes says fans should prepare to watch that unfold in the remaining episodes.
New episodes of Yellowstone air on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network.