Paulina Chavez is one of the standouts during Season 1 of Landman, and in a new interview, she tells Taste of Country how she prepped for the emotional intensity of her role — and what it’s really like to work with the show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan.
Chavez co-stars on Landman as Ariana, who husband gets killed in an explosion on an oil pump jack in the first episode.
Her character subsequently starts to become close to Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland), the son of the titular landman Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), and her character arc so far has included mourning the loss of her husband, as well as developing tentative feelings for another man and dealing with all of the pushback and judgment that comes from that.
Most recently, Cooper helped Ariana negotiate a million-dollar settlement with the very oil company that his father works for over the accident that killed her husband, while Tommy Norris has begun to come to terms with the fledgling romance.
Chavez says she had a surprising amount of freedom in creating the character of Ariana by working with Sheridan.
“From the time that I auditioned to the time that we actually shot was almost a year, and so I really got to live with Ariana and always finding new things about her,” she tells us.
Once she got all of the scripts, she was “able to find the arc alongside of Taylor Sheridan, and it was a very collaborative thing,” Chavez states. “Her story is so special, she’s so resilient, and I’m so excited for the audience to see that part of her.”
Sheridan “was always a phone call away if I ever had any questions about a certain scene, or how he wanted it executed,” she reveals. “And I think that’s beautiful. and it just shows how much he really cares about the content that he’s putting out.”
The heavy emotional scenes were not easy, she admits.
“I definitely took a lot of it home. A lot of it home … which I’m still working through,” Chavez finishes with a sheepish laugh.
The Season 1 finale of Landman is set to air on the Paramount+ streaming service on Sunday (Jan. 12). Paramount has not confirmed a second season yet, but the show has been a runaway ratings smash, and series star Demi Moore has indicated that a second season of the show is coming.