Lilli Kay marked a historic moment in Yellowstone when she appeared
on the series and shared a romantic kiss with another woman.
A new member of the Yellowstone cast in season 5, Lilli Kay
first appeared in episode 2, “The Sting of Wisdom” as Clara Brewer, the new
assistant to Governor John Dutton (Kevin Costner). Clara is capable and loyal, and much more professional than the family members and ranch hands John is used to working with, and their chemistry together was one of the best additions to season 5.
While Kay is only joining Yellowstone in season 5, she’s been connected to Taylor Sheridan’s show for much longer. Her father, Stephen Kay, is an executive producer on the series and has directed multiple episodes, including his daughter’s debut. Kay’s stepmother, Piper
Perabo, was also a recurring cast member in Yellowstone seasons 4 and 5 as Summer Higgins. Lilli Kay is a vocal supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and she had the chance to center a same-sex romantic moment on the show in an important instance of representation.
In season 5, episode 7, “The Dream is Not Me”, the employees at Yellowstone Ranch take a much-needed night off and go to the Montana State Fair. While they are there, a quick scene shows Clara and an unnamed woman wearing a cowboy hat sharing a kiss while sitting together on a blanket. This was Yellowstone’s first LGBTQ+ kissing scene, and it came around nearly by accident. According to Kay, the scene was simply written as “Clara kisses someone”, but as filming took place during COVID-19, production needed to find someone quickly who passed testing protocol.
“It came about kind of accidentally. I was in Montana with my partner and we were trying to figure out… It was just written [in the script] that I was making out with someone. We were going, ‘Well, who can you bring in for one day who’s comfortable to make out with, who’s in the [COVID] testing cycle?’ We thought about it and I said to my partner, ‘Is th at something you’d be comfortable with?’ Because the idea had been thrown out there. And they said, ‘Yeah, for sure,’ and so it worked out that way.”
It’s a testament to the staff on Yellowstone that they wrote Clara’s kiss as gender-neutral. From the way the actress tells it, the writers were not necessarily looking to have Clara be straight or gay, they simply needed someone for the scene. When Clara’s real-life girlfriend volunteered, they didn’t blink. The scene doesn’t make a big deal out of a kiss. It could just as easily be a man and a woman sharing the blanket, and it’s that type of normalization that’s critical for LGBTQ+ representation. As Kay says,
“I remember seeing something about it where somebody wrote that, ‘A lesbian kiss just came out of nowhere.’ What do you mean? It doesn’t have to come out of anywhere! Queer people exist. We’re in the world and to just treat it like she’s just in the background and making out… I think that’s something good. To me, it felt nice not to have a lot of fanfare around how it was going to be received.”
Clara has fit right in with the Yellowstone cast, which isn’t always an easy thing for newcomers to do. By necessity, the show is more focused on the Duttons and the characters the audience has been with since the beginning, so anyone new will always be regarded with some suspicion. Her role as John’s confidant, an intelligent and professional assistant, and a capable cowgirl in her own right, makes Clara a well-rounded addition to the cast. She isn’t frustrating, obnoxious, or overly cool, she works in Sheridan’s world and acts like a real human.
