Even though “Yellowstone” was essentially an ensemble drama from the start,
that hasn’t stopped it from adding new faces with each subsequent season. In fact, Season 5,
Part 1 would go on to introduce characters like Abby (Lainey Wilson), a member of the growing
cast of the show as well as a burgeoning love interest for Ryan (Ian Bohen).
However, Wilson wasn’t emotional during her first “Yellowstone” scene because she was smitten with Bohen or anything like that. It was much more personal during the sequence, which involved Beth (Kelly Reilly) rather than Ryan. Because her father had contracted a potentially fatal fungal infection, Wilson admitted that she considered dropping the role.
Her father, for his part, wasn’t having it and gave her some sage advice, much like John Dutton (Kevin Costner) probably would. “He said: ‘I don’t care if it’s my funeral. If you have a job to be done, you better go do it. And don’t come back until it’s finished,’” Wilson told USA Today. “I packed my bags. That gave me the strength to do it. But I won’t lie, I’d shoot my scene, go to the corner, and cry a little bit.”
Of course, all of this pressure was only compounded by the fact that Lainey Wilson was shooting her first scene with Kelly Reilly, the performer behind the notoriously prickly Beth Dutton. Though Reilly turned out to be much kinder than her fictional counterpart, that didn’t stop the country singer from having some trepidation about shooting with the more seasoned actor.
“I told (Reilly) when I met her, ‘I thought you were going to put me in a headlock,’” Wilson recalled. “But we got along great. She even gave me some handmade bath salts.” As anyone who watches “Yellowstone” would know, giving a gift like that is about as far from Beth Dutton as one can possibly get.
As for “Yellowstone” co-creator Taylor Sheridan, it turned out that he didn’t want Wilson to do anything more than play a version of herself, which probably helped to take some of the pressure off. “(Sheridan) said he wanted me to pretty much be myself, which is a dream come true, especially when you’re trying to introduce yourself to people,” she explained.
“All I got from him at that time was that I would play a musician who would fall in love with one of the boys. He didn’t even tell me which one,” Wilson added. While Abby’s fate depends on a Season 5 cliffhanger, it’s still possible that we haven’t seen the last of her on “Yellowstone.”
