Kayla Wallace Talks Tough In Landman

Do not trifle with Rebecca Falcone.

The hard-charging, take-no-prisoners lawyer potently played by Kayla Wallace (When Calls the Heart) in Landman is occasionally underestimated — or worse, disrespected — by clueless guys on the other side of the negotiating table. It rarely takes long for her to show them the error of their ways.

Consider the scene early in Season 1 of the Taylor Sheridan-produced series where she accompanies Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), the titular crisis manager for M-Tex Oil, as he sits for a deposition by insurance company lawyers because, while drug cartel minions unloaded their latest shipment from a small plane (stolen from M-Tex) into a van on a remote Texas road (built by M-Tex), another company’s trailer truck smashed into the van and the plane, thereby causing a fiery and fatal explosion.

As we noted in our episode recap: “Tommy was characteristically and unapologetically sarcastic and disrespectful to folks on the other side of the negotiations who, truth be told, didn’t appear to know a whole hell of a lot about the oil business. But Rebecca came across as even more of an overt badass, brushing aside condescending and/or sexist remarks like Godzilla swatting fighter jets and generally winning the meeting. ‘I didn’t give you enough credit,’ Tommy marveled. ‘Nobody does,’ Rebecca replied. As Will Sonnett used to say: No brag. Just fact.”

And just to show Rebecca doesn’t play any favorites: At another point early in the show’s first season, there’s a big blow-up at a M-Tex drilling site that kills three workers and nearly claims  the life of a fourth — new employee Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland), Tommy’s son.

As Rebecca attempts to negotiate a settlement with the widows, she’s miffed that Cooper is inserting himself into the arbitration. And she’s mindful of an awkward development that might greatly complicate the situation: Cooper already is linked in a relationship with one of those widows, Ariana Medina (Paulina Chavez).

We’ll likely being seeing a lot more of Rebecca Falcone when Landman returns to Paramount+ this fall for Season 2. Especially since — spoiler alert! — after M-Tex owner Monty Miller (Jon Hamm) died, control of the company has shifted to his widow, Cami Miller (Demi Moore), with Tommy and Rebecca expected to oversee the day-to-day operations, along with some monumental risk-taking.

You can catch up with Season 1 either on the Paramount+ streaming site, or on home video. (The series will be available on DVDs and Blu-Rays chockablock with extras starting Tuesday, May 13.) We caught up with Kayla Wallace at her Vancouver home base to talk about the challenges she faced, and the satisfactions she savored, during the first season of Landman. Here are some highlights from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

Cowboys & Indians: When you took your first look at the first script, and saw these long blocks of legal jargon, were you at all intimidated?

Kayla Wallace: Yeah. I mean, the first time I read it, I just saw the size of these monologues — and I just knew it was going to be one of the biggest scenes to tackle in my prep. I did a lot of researching off the bat, so I knew what I was talking about exactly, and I was lucky enough to work with Taylor before we started filming on these scenes to get his input on where he kind of saw Rebecca going in these scenes. And that was super helpful, just to get what he was thinking about when he wrote it, and where he saw this particular scene taking Rebecca. But, yeah, the size of the monologue stood out to me at the beginning. But as I slowly started learning what I was talking about, it made it less and less intimidating, and more fun to say.

C&I: What else was part of your preparation? Like, did you check out Legalese for Dummies, or anything like that?

Wallace: [Laughs] I talked over a couple of things with a friend of mine who’s a lawyer here in Vancouver. And then I dove into just watching any trial that I could. There’s a lot available on YouTube, real live trials that you can watch all day, six hours of each day in court. And I also watched a lot of celebrity trials. So that was kind of my Law School for Dummies. Then later, I sat in on a real case in Fort Worth, to try to feel what these people were feeling. And that’s where I really fell in love with the art of litigating. It was so interesting to me and something that I didn't know much about before.

C&I: Right from the start, we see your character has to confront a fair amount of condescension and sexism. How easy was it for you to relate to that?

Wallace: I think every woman has dealt with a shade of that in their life, or at least has seen someone else deal with it. I love that, with Rebecca, it only fuels her more. It only makes her want to fight even harder, and it really only makes her stronger. So those comments in the script — they just added more fire in her belly. I love that about her.

C&I: Were there scenes that you had to shoot over and over because Billy Bob Thornton kept cracking you up?

Wallace: Well, he’s a very funny guy. I think we're seen that in some ways this is a very funny show — and I think a lot of it is him and his wonderful talent. He did crack me up a couple times. He’d change a line or two, or add something that he knew would get to me more. But I didn’t do much breaking [of character], which I can say I’m proud of. I've been there where you just get the giggles on a set, and you’re just trying your best to make it through a take without laughing. But I can say that that didn’t happen here.

C&I: Were there ever any dangerous moments for you on the set?

Wallace: Well, when a real live rattlesnake was there, and an ambulance on standby, that felt like danger. I mean, it was all done properly. We had snake wranglers and there was plexiglass between said rattlesnake and me. But that felt pretty scary to someone who’s never seen a snake before.

C&I: We’ve often talked with actors who compare playing certain roles to trying on new clothing. Like, how would I look in this coat? How would I look in this dress? Did you feel like Rebecca Falcone was a good fit for you?

Wallace: Initially? I got to be honest, I’m just not very confrontational as a person. So initially I was like, that’ll be my biggest hurdle to jump over — to find her strength and her power. That’s what she is — she’s incredibly powerful and driven. But I have always really connected with somebody who works their absolute hardest to get her job done. And that’s what Rebecca’s doing. She will give it her all to win her cases. She has that whatever-it-takes kind of thing going for her, that mindset. So I really connected with that.

C&I: Do you think you need to have that kind of mindset in pursuing an acting career?

Wallace: [Laughs] One hundred percent.