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Taylor Sheridan’s Landman found a way to call out previous criticism about the scantily clad characters played by Ali Larter and Michelle Randolph — and their nearly naked looks on the show.
During the Sunday, December 21, episode of the hit Paramount+ series, Tommy (Billy Bob Thornton) sees his ex-wife, Angela (Larter), strutting around their shared house in a shirt that barely covers her bright yellow bra.
“Could you please put all your clothes on before you come downstairs?” he asked Angela, who fired back, “Oh, it bothers you to see my body?”
Tommy clarified that it didn’t “bother” him specifically, adding, “But there’s other people around here.” Angela then asked Tommy’s father (played by Sam Elliott) if he took issue with her attire, which he did not.
“I give up. I love you both and there’s nothing I can do about that,” Tommy noted when daughter Ainsley (Randolph) walked in wearing a similar outfit. “I f***ing surrender.”
In Landman, which premiered on Paramount+ in November 2024, Thornton played a corporate fixer for an oil titan (Jon Hamm). The West Texas-set drama has life-and-death stakes but its Thornton’s scenes with Randolph, who plays his 17-year-old daughter, that went viral for moments such as her talking to her father about her sex rules while walking around his house — which he shares with two men of similar age — in bikinis and her underwear.
“I worked with a dialect coach, a movement coach and an acting coach and I just studied like crazy. I had about a year almost to prep for her,” Randolph, 28, told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2024 about her approach to Ainsley. “It was incredibly helpful to kind of sit with that character. I worked really hard to find ways to justify her behavior and make a full human out of something that doesn’t always seem like what a 17-year-old would say, but people like that exist.”
First appearing in Sheridan’s 1923 series, Randolph said Landman “required 10 times more prep” for her.
“I wanted to be very careful about the way that Ainsley comes across. There’s only so much that I can control, but you also can control a lot as an actor,” she shared. “And just being around Ali [Larter] and Billy [Bob Thornton] and Jacob [Lofland] and being in Texas really helped create this full person that Ainsley is. She has this free essence about her and she’s wild, and I loved every second of it.”
Randolph urged viewers to give Ainsley the space to evolve, saying, “She’s 17 and she’s growing. I think she gets it more than the audience gets to see. There are moments where your realize that she can be, not manipulative, but she knows how to play her dad, and also her mom. She knows how to get what she wants. She loves her family.”
She concluded: “She is figuring out who she is and meeting different peers and going to school. She’s not just the bratty young daughter; she is a person. We get to see 5 percent of who Ainsley is. Hopefully as the show goes on, we get to see all of who she is.”
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Randolph knew Landman viewers were confused by her character Ainsley’s behavior — but she had no regrets about how she chose to play her.
“It’s hard to not be aware of it,” she explained. “But I disassociate and the thing is, I got the script. I read it. I had my moments, my thoughts.”
Randolph, however, didn’t disagree that Ainsley’s actions could be confusing. “Some of the things that Ainsley has to say are shocking and there were moments where I thought, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pull this off,’” she admitted. “I want to find the most human version of this character that I can, and I work really hard at doing that.”
Despite the online backlash, Randolph noted that she stuck to what was on the page.
“My job ended when I finished my last day on set, and then I released it. The show went out,” she continued. “I can’t tell people how to interpret my character, but at least it’s sparking conversation. And I’m really proud of the show that we made.”
New episodes of Landman premiere Sundays on Paramount+
