The Louisiana-born actor rides tall as Wade on Taylor Sheridan’s popular Yellowstone prequel.
They’re heading for the last roundup this weekend on 1883 — well, for Season One, at least — but don’t worry: You’ll likely be seeing much more of series co-star James Landry Hébert in the weeks and months ahead.
Indeed, you may have seen the Louisiana-born actor even before he saddled up to play Wade, a blunt-spoken, practical-minded cowboy who can turn on a dime from horsing around to heroic action. His impressive resume includes credits like Axel in Stranger Things, Slim Miller in Westworld, and Clem in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. More recently, he’s done his fair share of Wild Westing in the independently produced films Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher (starring fellow 1883 cast member Martin Sensmeier and currently streaming on Netflix) and The Last Son (starring Sam Worthington, Thomas Jane, and rapper/actor Machine Gun Kelley).
At the 2014 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, he loomed large in two well-received indies: Two Step, a neo-noir thriller that earned him praise from The Hollywood Reporter for his “riveting performance,” and A Night in Old Mexico, in which he played a hitchhiker who made the big mistake of stealing money from a drug dealer, and then compounded his error by stealing beer from Robert Duvall. Next month at SXSW, he’ll appear in the world premiere of To Leslie, a drama starring Andrea Riseborough, Marc Maron, and Oscar-winner Allison Janney.
Hebert (pronounced A-Bear) was born to a Cajun family in Lafayette, La., but was orphaned at an early age — and eventually adopted by a family on an Indian reservation, where he spent most of his childhood. After graduating from high school “on the rez,” he studied theater at Louisiana State University, spent years at various occupations ranging from horse wrangler to band manager, then settled in post-Katrina New Orleans just in time to take advantage of a filmmaking boom there. He talked about all this and more — including, of course, his adventures as Wade in 1883 — when we spoke with him in the C&I Studio.