Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Official Yellowstone Podcast. It's Jefferson White here. I am joined as always by my incomparable co host Jen Landon. Hey, Hey, we are so glad to have you with us today. We are also very very lucky to have with us Chairman Rainwater himself Gil Birmingham. So grab a snack, buckle, your seatbelt, depending on where you are, We'll be right back. So, Jen, I would be remiss if I didn't mention you are once again in a different state than the last time
we recorded. What state are you in now? What brought you there? Where are you in your sort of incredible nomadic tour across the American West.
I like that you framed it as my nomadic tour across the American West. I have made my way to the last West before we hit the sea. I am in California.
I am far west as it gets, as far west.
As it gets. I'm still not home. I'm in Palm Springs visiting my grandma, who is eighty three and just a wonderful, wonderful fun lady. And I was in Vegas just before this. I got to see nineteen twenty three, which I don't know if we're allowed to talk about it all, I won't say anything about it, but what I will say is that it is phenomenal. I had one of the experiences in the theater where I got emotional just because something was so good and I loved it.
It shot beautifully. I saw Helen Mirren Harrison Ford from about fifteen feet away, and then I sort of just blacked out, not from alcohol, to be clear, And that's where I'm at.
What about you, Jeff, I am so excited to see it. So many of my favorite actors are in that cast. So many of the brilliant minds that make Yellowstone look the way it does are behind that Ben Richardson, who was the DP for the first season of Yellowstone. It's so many of the ingredients that have made Yellowstone and eighteen eighty three so spectacular just being brought to bear on I think one of the most interesting periods in American history.
I felt the same way in terms of the period being something that was so rich in and of itself, and Ben really shot the hell out of it. A big part of my emotional reaction was the way he shot it. There are images I usually think of. I usually consider something art if a week later, the images are still floating through my mind, and images from that are floating through like painting standalone pieces. He's incredible.
I feel the same way about some of his work on season one of Yellowstone. I feel the same way about a lot of his work in eighteen eighty three. I am so excited to see that. And it's such a cool thing. You know, Like every week on Yellowstone, there's this idea that's been a part of the show since the beginning of this history, this culture that we're
fighting to preserve. In this week's episode of Yellowstone, we spend some time in this graveyard, this history, these ghosts that haunt this family, and that John Dunton's life feels, to a certain extent like an homage to what came before. So it's such an amazing thing to jump back in time and be immersed in that history and see what it is they're fighting for. So I really cannot wait for that show. Okay, yeah, digging it. So we're clearly we're clearly excited to jump into it and talk about
this episode of Yellowstone. Speaking of the Dutton Ranch, a recurring theme on the show Yellowstone, believe it or not. This episode opens up deep deep into the Dutton Ranch, up deep in the mountains, and it starts with JD,
Beth and Rip on a gather. So at the end of the last episode, we witnessed everybody riding out, riding out into the wilderness, into the furthest reaches of the Dutton Ranch to gather up all of the cows, all these these pairs they call them right so moms and calves and bring them back to the ranch in order to branch and right.
What we see throughout this entire sequence is that everybody, everybody benefits from this adventure. Everybody needs it. I think there's a line that Casey says where he's talking about Tate to John and he says he needed this and John says, we all do, Son, And that sort of need and enthusiasm continues through with the Clara character, just like riding up and since we can cuss on this podcast, she's like, this is fucking awesome, and that smile never ends.
And John says something to be effective, like if you could only bottle it up and sell it.
Yeah, there's that amazing line where John says to Casey, you could sell it, Son, you could bottle it up and sell it. And Casey says, there's no one to sell it to Dad. The only people who know what it's worth are already doing it, which I think is so funny.
Which is funny and also so true. And I feel like you have had this experience as an actor. I've had this experience as an actor, which is, horses were not a part of my life. Ranching was not a part of my life. And I have become one of those people who sometimes will say the difference between a good day and a great day is riding a horse. And so it's something that you don't really know until
you experience it. And we've been lucky enough to be forced into a situation and paid handsomely to experience it.
Yeah, we've had the incredible privilege of getting put on the best horses in the world and being taught by the best trainers in the world, such that we can sort of brush up against the grandeur of this experience. So what was this like? So you guys are there, You're doing this massive gather. In practical terms, that basically means forming a huge dragnet of cowboys and combing through miles and miles and miles of trees and ravines and
rivers and lakes to gather all these cows. Will you just talk about the experience of riding out and doing that gather. Yeah.
We shot this whole sequence from sort of the moving down Mount Chisholm and pushing the cattle into the Dutton ranch. I feel like over a course of three months and many different shoot days and trying to tie it all together in my brain as I looked over the episode was fascinating. My favorite days are cowdays. You oftentimes never see your crew. You're so far away and so immersed in the pushing of the cattle you forget cameras are there,
except that when you see one really close. Often times you'll sort of use your horse to shield said camera from cattle that may or may not be moving too quickly towards it and the innocent crew standing behind it.
The fact that we got to shoot this over so many days meant that I got to hang with the wonderful Buck Taylor, And because we got shut down due to air quality for many days trying to grab this sequence because the wildfires were so bad in the valley, meant that I got even extra time with Buck Taylor, and we know, based on what happens in this episode extra time with Buck Taylor is precious time because it
is the last time. So Taylor, besides bringing in these mamas and these babies, of course for this branding the sort of newness of life, we also come to the end of life with the passing of Emmett Walsh, which I know is more plot oriented than process oriented, but it's where we landed.
Yeah, that duality as always, Taylor really hitting us with that duality, as you said, the joy, the sort of joy and kind of spark and fire of like birth youth. You know, there's so much sort of rebirth happening in this sequence. It feels like a bit of a rebirth for Clara as she participates in this. It's about a rebirth for Casey who's been grieving the loss of his son.
It feels like there's so much rebirth happening. And then on the other side of that, always with the duality, the dialectics, the passing of Emmett Walsh, who is a character that's been in Yellowstone from the very beginning. He's sort of been peppered throughout the series. He's been a part of the backbone of the series, a huge support structure for John. It feels like a bit of a north star for John as he's made political decisions, he's turned to Emmett Walsh to sort of say, hey, you know,
is this right? Are we doing the right thing? Am I doing the right thing by my constituents, by the ranchers around me? And so for him to lose that north stars, really it's a development.
It's a huge moment. And I love that he has that interaction with John before they fall asleep where they talk about how it's a perfect day. And I found that so moving because if we could only be so lucky to have that perfect day on our way out. And there's also this theme that Taylor hits on in the sort of following sequence when he's coming back with
Landy Wilson's character Abby, who's waiting for Ryan. I always get the names confused, because I feel like we all have our names overlapped somehow in the show and some people but Abby is waiting there, and there's this theme obviously of a cowboy you'll never really have them. And I was so moved by the fact that Emmett passed away away from his wife, and that as sad as that might be on one level, like how poetic and beautiful that even in death they sort of belong to
the land. The cowboy belongs to the land and belongs to the herd. And when John delivers that news of his passing, though she collapses in grief, there isn't a sense that any thing bad or wrong has happened. That it's that it is so beautiful, and even her helping out later in the episode, she doesn't want Emmett's passing to overshadow anything about the beauty of this branding.
Yeah, this cycle of life, you know, the cycle continues, and this sort of tradition continues. Yeah, which has been a huge motif this season, right, Like, it's also these rippin Beth stuff in this episode, I think is incredible because it's these quiet moments between the two of them. So much of this season feels like it's been dominated by Beth getting ripped away from home, getting sort of put on the camp, well not on the campaign trail, but into this new sort of arena. She's kind of
fighting further and further away from home. Every episode. She's getting in a private jet or a helicopter, and flying off somewhere else. So it's also feels so precious that Beth goes along, you know, against perhaps her usual instincts, she decides to go along on this gather and it means that the two of them have this time together in the mountains.
Yeah, and we get to see Beth the Beth the cowboy. I could say cowgirl, but I'll just say cowboy, you know. And in some ways she's she was more cowboy to me than anyone when she was like, give me whiskey and cigarettes and the person I love and I'm good and I loved. Like you said, she gets pulled further away from home. I feel like she's always being forced out into these situations where you know, she's having to
engage with big forces. But in many ways, Beth at her core just wants that small, tiny, you know, patch of peace to call her own with someone she loves. And that the juxta, that dichotomy is what makes the audience and me, it's part of what makes me love her so much.
Yeah, her philosophy we're getting, so we get so many nice little snips of her philosophy this season, which God bless her as it is with all of us is sometimes a little contradictory, you know, is often sort of whatever wins are the argument. It feels like sometimes her philosophy is just whatever's gonna win her the argument. But she has a great line in this episode that I think you and I both flagged, which is she says,
you know, they're talking about how beautiful. You know, Rip and JD are talking about how beautiful it is to be out there in the mountains, and Beth says, this isn't beautiful. It's too big to be beautiful. It's too much space to comprehend. Give me a little meadow and a creek. No one knows about that. I understand. I have it to myself. You can see this from a fucking airplane. I don't share the things I find beautiful,
which is such an interesting it's interesting beth philosophy. And it also I can't help but wonder if that's a bit of a tailor. It was just to it.
I was just gonna say, like, it's the most it's such a sneak. It's such a reveal of tailor conscious or not. I'm so glad you just said that.
Yeah, so funny, because you know, I think Taylor could talk about this much more eloquently than we ever could. But I think there's a little bit of tailor in a lot of these characters. And I think there's a little bit of tailor in Beth. And sometimes she says something in him like I feel like that's just tailor talking. Because as he's built this empire that we all know are lucky to be a part of, as he kind of builds this massive, huge thing, he also what he
loves is horses. He loves these simple moments. He loves the little things. Some of the happiest times I've seen him is not on set. It's when he's working at his ranch, when he's just sort of participating in real life on a cattle ranch.
You know, he feels so much to me like that. And the guy loves to cook. He's an amazing cook. The first night I ever stayed over on the ranch, at like seven am, I had gotten in late the night before. He's like, get up. I'm like, huh. He's like, we gotta go move cattle. Let's go so and pushed cattle. I feel like we've sat through a few good comedies together. He's just a really uh He's certainly not a simple person, but the things that soften his heart are simple.
Yeah, it's a little bit like if Jeff Bezos was in the Amazon warehouse, like taping up boxes, you know what I mean. It's a little bit of like Elon Musk is down at the Tesla Factor, like screwing wheels into a car. You know, Taylor, like he's really out there living this life. Everything he's ever asked us to do, he fucking loves doing. And if he could choose, I know he would be you know, yes, wrestling a calf on the ground trying to hold it down instead of instead of writing.
There were days when he would be directing and producing and also like writing other shows in his head, and he'd like grab the hose to like water down the arena, like because he just loves those things to the point where I'm like, I think, like union wise, like someone else has to do that.
Yeah, hey, mister Bezos, do you mind I'll tape that box up. You're gonna get a paper cut. Listen. Another thing I can't help, but notice is you said that while you guys were shooting this gathering sequence in the branding with you guys were shut down by forest fires, which has also been a sort of image that's recurred in the show this season. In the narrative of the show, will you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, the fires showed up in We ended up shooting this whole sequence in bits, again, spread out over a course of a few months. There were a few pieces that just became impossible for us to grab because the fire season in Montana starts usually in like in the one hot month that Montana has, the air quality was,
I believe the worst in the country. It started in northern Idaho and up through there, and a part of why we can't shoot is for our health, but also for the well being of the animals more than anything. I do believe the horses shut us down before the people do. But adjacent to smoke, I think, I think it's a bit of a sidestep. But the actual flanking and branding of these cattle, all of the actors that you saw flank, all the does you see flank in
the episode are flanking in real life. The branding was happening. My snot was gray brown for many many days.
And yes, so just for a little cowboy glossary moment once again that the flanking is is grabbing a calf and throwing you know, it gets dragged. A cowboy lassos a calf's back legs drags it so sort of to kind of make it spread eagle. Two cowboys grab them and flip them on their back and pin their legs down so a third cowboy can brand them. And I think you're referring to the fact that when you brand a cow cow that's functionally made of leather and fur, there's a lot of smoke.
There's a lot of smoke that.
Just washes right over your face. So by the end of the day of branding, Yeah, you're you're really it's like you've been working in a coal mine all day. But it's not. It's not coal dust, no, you know, to say the least different.
A different kind of dust.
Yeah.
It anyway, shooting that entire sequence was amazing. That is one that I'm sorry that you missed because it was so beautiful and the locations that we got to go to were majestic. And sometimes at the end of those days, after you've got your last shot, but the sun is still out and the horses need to get back to where they go instead of just jumping off and handing them to a wrangler and getting back in your van and taking the twenty five minute van ride back or
thirty minute van ride back to civilization. Sometimes some of us would just ride as the sun was going down, after the cameras were done, and we'd just be sitting and talking and it was like we didn't want to let go. We didn't want to let go of the world we had just been in.
Oh, it's beautiful. It's what you said. It's the difference between a good day and a great day.
Hm. Totally.
Let's take a quick break and then we're going to dig into the rest of this episode because there's a lot of other stuff going on.
Okay, So jumping back in here, I want to talk a little bit about what happens with Potus coming to the Reds and that whole sequence. There were a few things that stuck out to me in particular, one of them being the dogs, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that and hear your thoughts, Jeff, and bounce that back and forth.
Yeah, what an incredibly chilling image about two completely different relationships to nature, right to nature and community. You know, So, Mo, we love a good MO episode. This is a great
MO episode. Moe is sort of discovers these black SUVs, these helicopters, this sort of operation going down, is trying to figure out it's trying to get to the bottom of whatever's going on here and ends up witnessing these secrets service agents killing these dogs, which is such a strange you know, you know, a stray dog, a quote unquote stray dog that could be perceived as a threat or just a sort of you know, it's something that
could be discarded so thoughtlessly by one person. Is somebody else's pet, is somebody is like a beloved part of somebody else's community. What an enduring image.
I felt like it was such a brilliant device for that Taylor uses when he does that, because one of the things that's irredeemable is the killing of a pet. That's something that in movies. I can watch humans die in movies. I'm like, yeah, whatever, but you kill a dog.
It's like that.
In Independence Day, the entire globe died, but then we thought the Golden Retriever died in the tunnel and we were like, fuck this, I'm out. So these dogs, though, the things I mean for me my pets are I don't have children. They are the things that are sort of nearest and dearest to us.
Yeah, it's fascinating. It's this outsider's perspective on what safety means here. It's this outside force coming in and telling Mo, daring to tell MO what safety means or what security means on the reservation. And it's like, oh, nice of you to show up. You know, when was the last time you checked in on our safety and security?
Absolutely?
Oh, here, we are living our lives every day, confronting this difficult circumstance, and you're going to come in and tell us what represents safety and security. This sort of arrogance and tone deafness of that, I think is a really clear image. And then you know, it's sitting up as there's this kind of interesting political struggle going on in John Dutton's world, this interesting political struggle fomenting between
John Dutton and Jamie and his political opponents. There's also this interesting political struggle being set up on the red. So there's this, for the first time, this sort of threat from within. For five seasons, we've seen Rainwater navigate threats from without, you know, outside forces coming to strip away what belongs to his people. Now we're seeing this
interesting threat from within. So we're seeing angela blue thunder, yeah, setting up kind of propping up a political opponent for Rainwater, a young politician on the res named Martin kills Many. And I think that's a really interesting expression of the fact that, hey, this is this community is not a monolith.
There is not only one idea of how this place should operate, just like any other government, just like any other place on Earth, there are many conflicting ideas about how the Reds should operate and how it should be run, and what their priority should be. And it's fascinating to see that play out and to see Rainwater confronted with that for the first time. You know, he's now got an opponent from inside the house. You know.
Yeah, I'm anxious and deeply interested in how this dynamic is going to play out.
Yeah, I'm really excited to see that me too.
Speaking of interesting dynamics that we saw play out in the shower, Uh, whoa, let's jump to our like Jamie Sarah that that.
Weird little rom com here, right.
There's this amazing thing where she's that she's you know, saying, I'm I have no ulterior motives, like I am into you, and being into you made me want to like fight for you. And what I love is that he basically is like, no, our ulterior motives are not separate from our foreplay. They are integral and crucial. He like goes in and is like make me, make me powerful, and then it's just game on. As messed up as it might be, I really feel like it's sort of a relationship model for acceptance.
Yeah, it's all on the table. At least at least they're not deceiving each other. There's a big like Macbeth Lady Macbeth thing going on. There will to power and these two people sort of enabling each other and pushing each other deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. It's also it's such a demonstration of like, you know, nobody has really approached Jamie with the carrot for like five seasons. Everybody's just kind of chased Jamie around with the stick.
So I think it makes a lot of sense that he's susceptible to a charm offensive and now he's really in over his head. But it's maybe he wants to be in over his head. It does seem like it doesn't seem like he doesn't know what he's getting into. It seems like he knows what he's getting into, and he's forgive me going deeper and deeper into it.
Yes, I feel like he is an There's only so long If you are treated like the bad one for so long, there at some point you must become the thing. And there's actually like a line at the end of that scene which was stage direction and not dialogue, but I sort of loved it, which Taylor says, his meaning Jamie's his passion gives way to something more frantic, and I was I like, my mind went dot dot dot Daddy issues question Mark, Like what like, what is this more frantic?
That is so funny. There's a lot of it. It's also like it's sweet. There's all these sort of blossoming, beautiful romances. There's all these kind of spring romances happening on the show this year. There's Abby and Ryan, there's an amazing new romance introduced this episode, a little love interest for Carter, which is very exciting. So there's all these kind of spring romances, and then it's interesting to see this kind of mature machiavellian kind of you know
fall romance happening between Jamie and Sarah. Kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's these kind of sweet, almost naive kind of young love sequences.
Nobody makes it pass first base in that love.
Whereas Jamie and Sarah, you get the sense that they are running laps, you know, you get the sense that they're just they're just running laps around the basis. It really is wild. Every week when I when I think it can't get any better, they do it again. They blow the roof off again. I really I cannot wait for next week's episode. We're gonna take a quick breather. When we come back. We're gonna chat with a man that I'm proud to call my friend. He plays Chairman
Thomas Rainwater, the incomparable Gil Birmingham, So stand by. We feel so lucky to be joined today by an actor that has been teaching us a lot for five years now. We feel lucky enough to call him our friend. Thank you so much for being here, Gil.
So a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Gil knows this. Jeff, I don't know if you know this, but my family doesn't really talk to me about anybody on the show. But I get weekly calls from my mother and my younger brother about seeing Gil in one of the eight hundred projects he's working on, and how he's the best actor in the world and they're obsessed with him and they want to sit down and have dinner with him and be his friend.
Let's let's make that happen. I'd love to sit and dine with your family.
Gil. Was your first interaction with Taylor around Hell or High Water? Was that your first crossing with him? It was, yeah, And I feel like you guys have not just so work partnership, but a friendship that sort of that transcends the workplace as well. Did you guys have that friendship from the get go?
Well, I think it developed. You know, it's funny because my biggest my biggest advocate for Hell or High Water was David McKenzie, the director, because we had a number of of talented actors that were really campaigning for that role, and Taylor wasn't familiar with me really to speak of, and he was really simply the writer. He didn't direct either, But David McKenzie really really pitched for me. And then once Taylor saw the work and I think what was
his words? You know, I didn't know your work before, but from now on, you'll never have to audition for me. And when Murder came after that, and of course then it was just being integrated into the family with Nicole and Gus and being invited out to the rant, spending Christmas with them time to time, and yeah, it's been both a professional and a personal collaboration. You know, just a lot of love, man.
I just because the people listening won't know this. One of the things that Gil that I love about working with you, and I feel like I've had scenes with you and I haven't is because Gil loves coming to set on days that he's not working and just hanging out, and oftentimes you have been a presence on set that may makes me feel like everything in the day is
going to go much better. And I love that I get to hang out with you because otherwise I'd probably I would have seen you at a bellator fight and maybe run into you in a restaurant in Darby. But because you're such a team player, I feel like I've had all these interactions with you.
I you know, I love the way Jeff Bridges put it one day, he said, you know, we do the work, but the best part of any job is the hang, you know, And on Hell or High Water, we would look at the dailies at the end of the week and then we'd party a little bit, play some music, and you know, just to get to know each other personally. But you know, that interview carries on to the set
and the dynamics of the characters. And I think that's what I love about coming down the set because I don't I don't want to interfere, you know, with people's work, workspace and process. I know that their focus is on that. I do want to be there to kind of absorb it and support it and just be part of the family, you know, And.
That's You're so right that I think it actually, rather than distracting from the work, in many ways, it is the work, because you know, in this show, your character, for instance, your character and most character have a lifelong relationship, and what supports that lifelong relationship is the work you do on set. But it's also the time you spend
together offset. It's sort of building a familiarity and an intimacy that transcends what we see on screen such that when we see you on screen we feel a shared history.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's the authenticity, you know, of the dynamics of the characters that I feel most connected with, and that's what we want to, you know, kind of engage in in the craft as a whole. That it makes it so much easier and believable. I think when you have a personal connection, if that works, if you're lucky enough to have that kind of relationship and opportunity, and it really does transfer in a real way on the screen.
I would say it does because I would put you on the list of the five actors most likely to make me cry while watching their performance. Do you feel like you can get that authenticity into any part that is written that you read or do you feel like some parts And it's probably part of your decision making where you go, this isn't there isn't something interesting or three dimensional here and I'm going to set this one out.
Sometimes you just have to step into a scary place and trust you know. I mean, it's your team. The show that I did that your family was so complimentary about. Under the banner of every there's a number of times I had some questions and some doubts about always going to make this believable and would this be a situation that would happen between these these two characters. So that's
that's a good director. You know that you can trust and guide you and then your own internal mechanisms that tell you whether it feels true or not, and just jumping off the board sometimes and hope that it works.
Yeah, it's really it's interesting when you really kind of take that same internal process, like your personal internal, rich internal life, and you apply it to characters that are in dramatically different circumstances. So even just in your work with Taylor, right in Taylor's writing, You've played three characters that I know of that all of which come from
very different socioeconomic backgrounds and have very different experiences. So your character and when River versus you know, rain Water on Yellowstone have completely different experiences, while you yourself have the same sort of internal emotional oulu can me? So will you just talk about your process specifically of working on rain Water, how you approach that somebody whose real life circumstances are quite different than your own.
Well, you know, uh, you know, I've had a lot of a lot of interaction with you know, the chairman of my own my own tribe. You know that the commanche down there, and I've basically modeled rainwater after him, you know, and I see the you know, the how would I say, I know, the strength and the difficulty of trying to manage through all the all the elements that are involved in trying to be a leader and
serve the people. I think it got quite quite a bit more expanded on Yellowstone because he's he's really feeling responsible for for the whole tribe in a larger sense as it relates to land. But that's really about creating, you know, that space where they have their own sovereignty, where they are not subjugated to any of the other devices, as John Dutton is as well, you know, of outside
interest trying to corrupt it. But there's four of us, I want to say almost you know, it's hard to relate to spiritual in native worlds, you know, because it's
such a trope. But it really is the essence of the with the ancestral the ancestral heritage and legacy that we feel responsible to carry on because we're always standing on the shoulders of all those ancestors before us, and Rainwater really lives in a split world, you know, because he wasn't raised on the reservation, so he wasn't exposed the culture nearly as in depth to say most character.
But he's found a mission and a purpose to utilize what it is that he was given to be able to capture what the justice is and an necessity what with the things that are necessary to be a provide for its people.
And as you mentioned, it's this complicated relationship and it's something that JD struggles with too, this relationship between the history, the present, and the future and this kind of simultaneous you know, obligation and simultaneous responsibility and duty to preserve the history, to take care of the people that you're serving right now, and also try to project into the future and try to make decisions that are going to ensure a sort of stable and secure future. It's an
incredibly complicated job. It's an incredibly I don't envy, you know, being the head that wears the crown because it feels like he's been hold in so many different directions by a bunch of people, most of whom are right, you know, like almost everybody's right.
At the same time, well, he's pulled by a very dysfunctional family, so he's got that going for him and I and I you know, as I my sense is rain Water is that it's an even bigger a bigger world that he's trying to provide because it's not just for an immediate family. It's for his people right now, but it's very interrelated to the ancestry of all the people that came before him. And then the philosophy and the belief that we have to maintain and sustain this
for another seven generations. You know, that's that's the principle of the native the native culture, that we we stewart the land and we keep it the way it is, so seven generations will we'll have We're borrowing the land from our future, you know, from from our children. It's not owning it from the past. But that process has been going on ever since the beginning of colonization here in this country.
That's so beautiful. I was not aware of that. The preserving for seven generations down the line that the land belongs to them. That's a pretty fantastic way to sort of move through the world thinking that way.
And you know, one of the conflicts that arises this season over and over is that, you know, JD finds himself at odds sometimes with Rainwater. Sometimes Rainwater and JD's political goals lineup, and sometimes they don't, And we see JD sort of like fighting a lot of battles about with different people who have different ideas of what the
land should look like in seven generations. And Rainwater has found himself in a sort of uneasy truce with JD for a couple of seasons now, but it feels like this season we're really starting to test the limits of that truce, you know, so they've been working in tandem, but now especially as as Rainwater faces these threats from within, as he faces this kind of insurgent political campaign from within the reservation with Martin Kills, Minnie and Angela Blue
Thunder sort of mounting this campaign against him. Will you talk about that, Will you talk a little bit about this idea of simultaneously facing threats from without and from within.
Yeah, that's that's a really interesting twist. That's that Taylor is incorporated it, but it also exists in the native world. You know, on reservations, there's always power struggles within the tribes and and that's you know, I guess we kind of attribute that to the level of colonization and the assimilation that the settlers have really kind of instigated from the beginning. You know, if you can keep keep a people in fighting, then they're easier to control, to manipulate.
And so it's a hard thing, you know, from the time that you know, children were stolen from their parents, put in residential schools and doctrinated, you know, and forced to be able to uh assimilate within the white culture.
So it's so ingrained to the level that to get back to the essence of the culture, man, you got to you have to debrief all that, and it's it's a lot of in the DNA conflict of what the natural origin of the culture was and of the people that have been here since millennia and then to encounter another outside force that try to change them. I mean, it's gone on obviously globally, you know, since the Europeans have left, but our show deals with specifically the dynamics
in America and the indigenous people here. But yeah, I know that, I don't know if you're from that with Russell Means, he was talking about the years ago. He was a member and founder of the American Indian Movement back in the seventies, but it became a more militant group in terms of fighting the forces that were trying to subjugate us. Basically a peaceful people, but that extension of control or the nature of human beings or government,
well eventually touched everyone, you know. And he had a great line where and I think Taylor even name called one of his episodes that you're the Indian now, so I have a bit of irony there, and I think that's what John Dutton's John Dutton's experiencing, you know, from his point of view.
Yeah, that is fascinating. And there's been so many times throughout the series that it's echoed. Like there's been so many moments where John Dutton says, somebody's trying to take my land, and then Rainwater turns to him and says, hey, wait a second, what do you mean your land? Since when buddy, it's such a fact. Yeah, those echoes, and
it's such a speaking of those echoes. As you know, the Yellowstone Universe expands, as we have had, you know, the opportunity to see eighteen eighty three, nineteen twenty three is coming out soon. It's an amazing thing to delve back into and come into often painful confrontation with this history.
Yeah. I think that's the beauty of Taylor's you know, spin offs, is that you know, you're getting a sense of where all this originated from, you know, for generations and of course for rainwater. You know, like I spoke of before, this is really in our DNA. This is you know, centuries, centuries, you know, so the depth of that connection and how it's evolved and developed to the place where we are in present day is a very
visceral experience. And boys, it's ever changing, you know. It's it's the society itself has changed as you know, as we're waiting to see now, you know, the polarization and the politicalization and John becoming a politician, you know, and that being injected into it. But it's it's extremely challenging. Uh makes for good TV, you know. But at the same time, we want we want to we want to tell stories that kind of reflect back to us about
what how are we acting as human beings? You know, this this is real, a real reflection of our society and is this the kind of people we want to be and isn't there a better way to do it?
Uh?
Specific for for the Debton and his ranch and the family, but I think they're kind of two coins, or two sides of the same same coin. For for Rainwater and John.
Yeah, this responsibility to a history, to this responsibility to a history to a culture. They both feel that, and then and then diving into that history and that culture in these prequels. I can't help it, you know, like it feels very vindicating for Rainwater for this other side
of the conversation. As JD's relationship to Rainwater sort of grows and shifts and changes over time, I think it becomes clearer and clearer that from the beginning of this thing, Rainwater was right and JD is slowly coming around to That's That's sort of how I'm interpreting it.
Well. The one thing that they have in common, I think is the respect of the way they're connecting to the land. I mean, that's where that's that's their connecting element, because the land is what's is the essence of where their identity is, their existence is, and the land is is the nurture. The land is ultimately the life force of all humanity and how we conduct ourselves into how we sustain it is really going to do determine what
our lives are going to be. And I think the sense of just kind of roughshot and over development, you know, for corporations and everything, is just a death sentence. So we're trying to rent that and try to save as much of it as we can, maybe for our own individual purposes or our own different philosophies, but it's about the land and it's about the people.
Yeah, Gail, I can't thank you enough for joining us. I'm such a huge fan. I'm so excited to see what comes next for Rainwater, but also just for you. I feel like anybody who's looking for something good to watch just go look at Gill's IMDb and pick anything, just because it really is spectacular filmography.
I think you can just search his name in a Netflix box or a Paramount box.
Oh thank you guys so much. Man. I always a joy to see your faces and to speak with you, and just a ton and ton of love to you both.
As always, it's amazing to speak with Gil, it's amazing to learn from Gil. Before we go, we want to call out a really important podcast from our friends at CBS News. Missing Justice investigates the missing and murdered Indigenous person's crisis through the story of one woman who lost her life on a reservation in Montana. Christy Wooden Thigh's family rushed to her home on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation when they got the shocking news that the thirty three
year old mother was dead. They arrived to find no police officers, no approaching sirens, and no sign of Christy. Missing Justice takes you inside what really happened that night and the federal investigation that followed. Here's a first listen. Be sure to check out the full series.
Christy Wooden Thigh died two years ago on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in lam Dear, Montana. When her family arrived at the scene of her death in a neighborhood just a few miles from the police station, they were shock that officers hadn't secured the scene.
Where's the cops? First of all, why is it no cops here?
Because it's a crime scene, you know, like there should have been yellow tape.
The tragedy of Christie's death turned into a two year ordeal for her family and most of all. It left them in search of what they felt their sister deserved.
Justice.
No, I don't feel like justice was served. I feel like we have to serve justice ourselves. It affected the whole community.
I'm Kara Cordy and I'm Bo Erickson, and we cover the federal government for CBS News, and together we've been investigating how federal authorities respond to emergencies, investigate crimes, and prosecute suspects across Native American reservations. And that's how we found out about Christie.
We kind of had confidence in the police, hoping they'd arrest him, and then it was just silence, like nobody came in and let us know anything.
Her family and community demanded and arrest for Christie's death. That's Lenda got pissed off. That's Lenda's like raisen, how like, why the hell is this guy not in Still a dramatic trial revealed shocking mistakes made by investigators.
They just dropped the boss so much, over and over and over.
Through all of this, the Northern China community was outraged, but also not surprised because tensions with law enforcement had long existed.
There's a lot of families around here that deserve a lot better than what they've got from our law enforcement system. People need to work more with the police force to get things done, but they don't trust them.
But the issues in this community are not unique. They consider Christy one of the stolen sisters of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People's Crisis. Follow along as CBS News examines how well the federal government upholds its responsibility to keep Native Americans safe.
These families need justice.
That's like this shouldn't be happening, and when it does, it's really shocked because we've lost so many young women in the short time. Listen to Missing Justice from CBS News wherever you get your podcasts.
Wow, count me in. I'm excited and also a little afraid to hear more. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the only Official Yellowstone Podcast. We have new episodes every Sunday following the show. Listen to the Official Yellowstone Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Official Yellowstone Podcast is a production of one oh one Studios and Paramount. This episode was produced by Scott Stone. Brandon Getchis is the head
of audio for one oh one Studios. Steve Rasis is the executive vice president of the Paramount Global Podcast Group. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Jeremy Westfall, Ainsley Rosito, Andrew Sarnow, Jason Reid, and Keney Baxter from Paramount, and of course David Glasser, David Huckin and Michelle Newman from One to one Studios