It’s funny. I have a 21-year-old daughter, she’s in college now. She’s a sophomore, and my relationship with my daughter is so much different than my relationship with my sons. My sons are more like my buddies. And my daughter is like my precious gem, you know what I mean? But with mothers, just like the fathers, a lot of times the mother and the daughter will clash. The mother’s the bad guy to the daughter, and to the daughter, the father’s the hero, and then the opposite way with the guys, you know?
In a lot of ways, this season, the heart and soul of the show was those two relationships.
On the other side of that equation, your character was surrounded by a lot of women with big personalities, and those women kept Tommy in his place this season. Tell me about sharing so much screentime with Ali, Demi, Michelle, and those relationships.
First of all, it’s awesome. I love every minute of it, and one of the great things that Taylor does is—some writers write with one voice, so all characters kind of talk with the writer’s voice. Taylor has a knack for writing each person as an individual. I love that all the women are different. Well, probably the closest to each other are [Angela] and [Ainsley] because that’s her daughter. They love to party.
In terms of working with all these women, I grew up in a family where I was surrounded by women. There were a lot of women in my family. I was the first male grandchild in my family, so I was doted on by the women, which actually caused, weirdly … can I be jealous of a five-year-old? I was surrounded by so many aunts, cousins, my grandmothers, and my mom, so I grew up around a lot of big-personality-kind-of women, so I’ve been there. They didn’t all look like Ali and Michelle and Kayla and Demi, but they certainly had big personalities, so it felt like home to me in a lot of ways.
Tommy and Cooper had this conversation in episode two of this season about “breaking the cycle” of father and son relationships that felt very intimate. It also seemed like it felt very personal from your end, as an actor. Did you draw from personal experience there?
Absolutely. My father was abusive, and we did not have a good relationship. My father died at 44, so we never really got the chance, because I was 17. I mean, you know, what does a 17-year-old know about sitting him down to have a talk, you know? And, so, the relationship [Tommy has] with Cooper is actually closer than mine and my real father’s, but there are similarities. I absolutely had all of that in me in doing that scene. I have to say, that scene in the truck, maybe my favorite scene in season two because when he tells me that he loves me, and I just can’t quite bring myself to do it, I want to, and I bite back tears. There was no acting involved in that. I had to struggle to stop from bawling at the wheel.
Speaking of Cooper, we had a bit of a last minute surprise with his character when Ariana was attacked, and he killed her rapist. But surprisingly, it seems like he might be dodging those charges? In the same episode, you see Tommy re-establishing his relationship with Gallino. Cooper and Tommy seem like they narrowly miss a lot of chaos. Is Cooper really going to dodge this bullet?
That’s a huge question. I have no idea where that’s going, but if I had to guess, I would say yes, it will get dodged. I mean, thinking with my writer’s brain, it would be because of Tommy’s connections.
Sure.
Now Tommy has connections not only with the good guys, but also with the bad guy. By the way, those scenes I do with Andy Garcia are so real to both Andy and me. Sam [Elliott], Andy [Garcia], Demi [Moore], and I have all known each other for years and years, and Andy has this way about him that’s so charming. There’s nothing scarier than a bad guy who’s charming, and you start to kind of be reeled in and think, “Well, maybe this guy really is my buddy.”
The last image we see in season two is a familiar one. This coyote that Tommy told to “get out” in season one has returned. And at the end of season two, the coyote appeared again, and he tells it, “You don’t get this day.” What does this coyote symbolize for you?
I think Tommy is a guy who’s warily happy, so the coyote is still there. It haunts him, and I think what it represents for him—or I mean, to me—is a metaphor for Tommy figuring out who he is. “Am I the coyote? Am I standing in the mirror? Or is the coyote the cartel? Is it my family?” He can’t figure it out, but he knows that this coyote haunts him. Every now and then, he just tells what haunts him to take a vacation, just for a day or two.
I think there’s enough evidence at this point that any time Taylor Sheridan deploys a coyote, you have to keep an eye out for that guy.
I’m hoping this is the first good coyote.
