“Oh, I can’t wait, honestly.” Yellowstone‘s Kelly Reilly is as excited for the show’s historical prequel, 1883, as the rest of us.
It’s a fine time to be an Outsider. Yellowstone Season 4 rages on, with two spinoffs in the works: Texas-based 6666 and Westward Expansion prequel, 1883. While both are at the top of fans’ anticipated shows, its the latter that has the Beth Dutton actress giddy.
“Oh, I can’t wait, honestly. I saw the trailer alongside everybody else,” Reilly tells Looper amidst her latest Yellowstone chat. “I know all the people who are working on it, they’re all the same crew,” she says, citing Ben Richardson, “who is our original director of photography from the first season.”
Joining Richardson (alongside much of Yellowstone‘s creative team) for 1883 will be Christina Voros, too, one of the franchise’s main directors. As Reilly cites, it’s “all the crew, all the hair and makeup, and all of these really talented people, going back to the beginning story of the Duttons,” and she can’t wait to see how it unfolds.
“I’m going to be watching, basically, Beth’s ancestors and seeing the similarities of those characters and why they’re fighting for this land so much. Why it means so much to John Dutton to protect it,” Reilly continues. To gain so much backstory for characters she’s intimately passionate over is a moving thought for the actor.
Why? “Because it’s their lineage, and the lineage of the needs of Americans. To see the whole gamut of who we’re fighting and what we’re taking, what we’re stealing and what we’ve won, and what belongs to who. There’s such a vast amount of story.”
‘Yellowstone’ Star Kelly Reilly Is A Big Fan Of Sam Elliot
Helping spearhead that story will be Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. The superstar married couple will give life to Beth’s ancestors, James and Margaret Dutton. But it’s another superstar that Reilly can’t wait to see in 1883.
“It’s got Sam Elliott in it, who I love so much. He’s one of my favorite actors. So, I can’t wait to see him. I just think it’s going to just be one of those massively luscious westerns. I can’t wait to see it,” she gushes.
Sam Elliott is the embodiment of the Hollywood Western for multiple generations in a way no one has been since John Wayne. To have him finally enter the Yellowstone fold is, as Kelly Reilly says, going to be something truly special.
And through it all, she’s given her full trust to mastermind Taylor Sheridan to create the most authentic Western experiences for audiences possible.
“He has that devotion for the life of the cowboy. But he also is super-connected to the Native Americans and their history, and our history with them,” she says of Sheridan’s career. “Because of that, I knew that this wasn’t just going to be a cowboy show with no depth or heart. I knew that it was going to be a full story. So, I really admired him for that, telling their story.”