It’s a demanding job being one of the toughest, meanest members of the Dutton family for five seasons straight, but Kelly Reilly has kept it consistent. Breaking spirits and cracking bottles open regularly, Beth Dutton’s unhealthy mixing of whiskey with venom spitting toward anyone who looks at her wrong has become an essential ingredient of “Yellowstone.” Having said that, the star that brought her to life in 2020 has admitted that even she’s found it hard to keep Beth’s sour attitude from going, well, sour.
You can’t go a season without Beth’s bingo card being stamped every time she lays into Rip (Cole Hauser), or verbally snaps a total stranger in two. It’s what fans tune in regularly to see. Thankfully, it seems Reilly has cracked the code to keep her character entertaining, and it’s by keeping Beth in the thick of the drama she constantly creates for herself. In an interview with Town and Country, Reilly, who has always been a big fan of American dramas, revealed she is constantly concerned when she’s given any scene where Beth gets a little brutal with her words and her accents in Taylor Sheridan’s beloved drama series.
“I don’t go ‘Oh yes, great,’ I go, ‘God, how am I gonna do this in a way that doesn’t repeat?'” said the British actress. Thankfully, Reilly has her alter-ego, who breaks overly-confident men at bars in board rooms, totally figured out. Well, you’d hope so. She’s been at it for five seasons.
Kelly Reilly believes Beth gets her energy from conflict
After spending so long fleshing out a character that clearly doesn’t work well with others, Kelly Reilly reached a conclusion about the woman she’d invested so much time in, and in doing so, she figured out how to keep Beth a fresh and interesting Dutton family member. Beth might be able to seal deals and shoo away opposing forces, but her real business is confrontation. “She lives off conflict. She has to feed off it. She gets energy from it,” Reilly said.
While that may have been her regular diet in the show’s earlier years, it feels like now, upon settling down with Rip, the fiery Beth spirit might be dying down. And why not? She’s certainly earned it after some of the traumatic experiences she’s had to endure. In the future, there’s a chance that she might break out that old fiery temper on rare occasions, like family dinners that end with front lawn fights or at bars when another overly confident man tries to make a move, and she has to put in their place. That’s the Beth thing about the show, after all.