The award-winning writer-producer plans to spend a lot of time in the saddle for Taylor Sheridan’s new series.
If you blinked, you might have missed Eric Nelsen in the premiere episode of 1883, Taylor Sheridan’s epic prequel to his top-rated Yellowstone. He played Ennis, the handsome young cowboy who, along with his partner Wade (James Landry Hébert), turned down an offer of gainful employment from Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott) and Thomas (LaMonica Garrett), the Pinkertons seeking a few good men to help them guide a wagon train across country from Texas to Oregon.
But don’t worry: You’ll be seeing a lot more of Nelsen in the weeks ahead after he has second thoughts about the job offer, and becomes enamored of a very special person on the wagon train passenger list: Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), a pretty young woman who just happened to be an ancestor of Yellowstone rancher John Dutton (Kevin Costner).
It’s yet another impressive credit on the resume of the 30-year-old multihyphenate who’s been active in the entertainment industry as both actor and producer for more than a decade. Nelsen is a three-time Emmy Award winner for his acting and producing work on the Amazon series The Bay. (Fun fact: At 23, he was the youngest producer in history to win an Emmy.) This past September, Nelsen also won a Tony Award for co-producing the Broadway play The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez’s multiple-Tony-winning play inspired by E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End.
Nelsen’s movie credits include roles opposite Liam Neeson in A Walk Among the Tombstones, Mickey Rourke in Nightmare Cinema, and Chris Cooper in Coming Through the Rye. He is married to Fort Worth native Sainty Reid, with whom he appeared in the streaming revival of the soap opera All My Children, and with whom he has two children.
Nelsen he displayed impeccable fashion sense when he recently joined me for a C&I Studio chat about 1883.