Kelly Reilly chats getting back in the saddle for Yellowstone spin-off

Yellowstone fans can rejoice as the long-awaited spin-off, Dutton Ranch, which focuses on Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler as they embark on a new chapter of their life, is finally here.

Fans of the beloved Western show have been begging for a more indepth look at their love story since the show began almost a decade ago in 2017. A farm hand and the ranch owners daughter, who have loved each other since they were teenagers but were separated by circumstance? Well, it’s like something from a romance novel.

Ahead of Dutton Ranch releasing, STELLAR sat down with Kelly Reilly, the star of the show, to chat all things Beth, failing to be a party animal and why we’d love to see her with some female friends!

Hi Kelly! Congrats on the new show, Dutton Ranch. Talk to me a bit about getting back into the character of Beth Dutton.

She is somebody that I have been playing for so many years. When I first started to play her, it was like climbing a mountain. I didn’t know how I was going to play her. It was really a tricky thing for me to really trust myself that I could inhabit someone like her. All the complexities of her and her confidence, and just what she carries when she walks into a room. I don’t have that in my life or myself; it was something I really had to work on finding. I’ve been playing her now since 2017, and here we are almost 10 years later. It iw, you know! I can just go into prep mode of Beth, and every year obviously is different. I’m in different variations of things that she’s dealing with, but as the sort of DNA of the character, I feel like I’ve got her. So it’s easy to step into.

Are you surprised that people just absolutely adore the character of Beth? She is quite a prickly character!

Well, she’s very polarising! It’s very nice when people say to me, ‘I love your character, I’m obsessed with your character.’ It tells me a lot about them, especially in the early years when she was just crazy. I have a lot of people who just want to drink whiskey with me and tear up the town, and I always feel like I disappoint them because they want this wild woman! There was the first season of Yellowstone where a lot of people didn’t like her, they just thought she was sort of bitch on wheels, and women love her more than men which is fine, great actually. She’s sort of grown on people over the years, which is the benefit and the joy of TV. The way Taylor Sheridan wrote her was so layered and nuanced, and there were so many different sides and aspects to her that we got to fall in love with. The thing I feel the most about Beth is that I was really always moved by her. Underneath all of it, there was such a deep soulful quality of total devotion to her father because she felt such shame. SO, for me, the heart was the thing that anchored me.

And it must be exciting to explore more of her in Dutton Ranch, which is focused on Beth and her husband, Rip!

Exactly! The curse of the ranch has been lifted, the land has gone back. The thing that she was her reason to be for all those years has gone so it allowed me to then go and try to explore a version of Beth without that. So there was a certain amount of who is she, who am I without that, who am I without the fight and what is it I want, all the questions we ask ourselves, what makes me happy, where do I see myself living. Beth is such a survivor, too, but as long as she has Rip, Beth can be anywhere. You could drop her anywhere, and she will find somewhere to make home as long as she has him. 

Beth and Rip’s love story is so beautiful. But maybe not what people would have expected from a cowboy show like Yellowstone. So were you surprised that it kind of took a life of its own and people really wanted to explore that side of the story as well?

My favourite part of the show is the relationships. Yellowstone was always a character-driven show more than plot. There were so many moments of characters coming together and seeing how they handled each other and dealt with one another, and what they said to one another. For me, my most favourite things is this love story between the daughter of the ranch owner and the orphan guy wh basically ran the ranch for him. It was like two worlds colliding. Beth has only loved Rip like since she was 16 years old, she’s only loved one man. It feels very romantic and deeply soulful and something that you would read in a book.

You mentioned that people always want to have a drink with Beth. But if you could sit down with Beth and have a drink what would you say to her?

I’d definitely sit down and have a drink with her. I mean, she’s got such a great brain. I definitely want to make sure I was on her side, I wouldn’t want to piss her off, and I’d probably want to see if I could help her in any way. I just know I wouldn’t want her as my enemy. I think there’s a softening happening to her right now. She’s open to new people and new relationships. That’s one of the nice things I’ve just been talking about with Ed Harris’ character as her first buddy. She’s actually got a friend, and Beth’s got no mates. When she asked Rip to marry her, he was like, “Well, who’s going to be there?” and she went, “Well my dad, like I don’t know, I don’t have any friends though.” And not without any feeling of self-pity, it’s just, she’s just such a loner, you know, and I like that about her actually.

I’d like her to have one woman in her life!

One woman that she could just lay it down with in the bar. It would be fun to see her do that. I thought Teeter from Yellowstone would be a good friend for her.

Dutton Ranch launches on Paramount+ on May 15th

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