For “Yellowstone” star Kelly Reilly, playing Beth Dutton is a lot like stepping into someone else’s life, and when you wake up, you wonder if you really said and did the things you dreamt about. “It’s hard for me when I’m playing her,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “I’m full in, and then it’s sort of like coming out and then I watch it, and I don’t even remember doing some of the things.” Considering Beth has gotten into physical fights with Jamie (Wes Bentley), blackmailed him, and threatened to kill him numerous times, it’s not surprising that Reilly has blocked it out of her memory.
Currently halfway through Season 5, even fans have begun to grow tired of Beth’s vengeful behavior towards Jamie. At this point, most of the audience has much more sympathy for Jamie than Beth, something Reilly understands. “Yeah, I feel really bad for Jamie,” Reilly said. “Sometimes I think the relationship with Jamie and Beth, it’s so toxic, it’s so full of betrayal and so full of pain for her. But I think the reason why all of that exists is because she loved him.” With even Beth’s portrayer feeling bad for Jamie, her hopes for Beth’s future make sense.
They both hope their characters find peace
It’s not difficult to understand why Beth would hate Jamie. She asked his help in getting her an abortion when she was young, and she ended up being sterilized instead. But given that those events happened about 20 years ago, at what point is the vitriol a bit too much? When asked by Entertainment Tonight if the relationship between the two could ever be healed, Kelly Reilly was hopeful. “I don’t know,” she said. “What I hope is that she will find some peace, and I don’t think you can find peace if you hold that much pain. If you haven’t sort of dealt with some of those things.”
But with Beth forcing Jamie to murder his biological father, then using it to control him and force him to do her bidding, it looks unlikely that peace is on the horizon, which Wes Bentley also seems to recognize. “When they were really young they were close, so I think Jamie was holding on to that hope that that could come back, maybe reconcile, maybe at least have peace. But after she makes him do that, he realizes there is no end to this,” he told Allen Media Group.
With Jamie considering hiring a hitman to kill Beth, and Beth telling her father that Jamie needs to die, it seems more likely any peace they get is going to be in death. But “Yellowstone” fans will have to wait until summer to see how Beth and Jamie’s Cold War plays out.