The actress on landing her dream part as U.S. Marshal Belle Skinner, galloping alongside Luke Grimes, and why filming the show’s high-stakes horseback chase gave her “full body chills.”
When Arielle Kebbel landed the role of U.S. Marshal Belle Skinner, it was a dream come true. Not only did it mean a snagging a part in Taylor Sheridan’s growing universe of Yellowstone-related hits and playing alongside Luke Grimes as he reprises his role as Kayce Dutton, it meant getting to saddle up.
Kebbel describes a scene in the opening minutes of the first episode of Marshals, where Dutton is galloping across the Montana wilderness in pursuit of lawbreakers, and Skinner is on horseback hidden around a corner in the trees. She joins him in the chase, and they run their horses together down a mountain slope.
“I got full body chills when I read the scene and knew that I had to land the role of Belle,” Kebbel says. When she auditioned for the part, a member of the crew for the movie she was filming was wearing a Yellowstone T-shirt. She took it as a sign of good luck—and it was. “When I got the part,”Kebbel says, “I practiced that horsemanship stunt take after take until my horse and I were one. I remember not believing that I was filming the opening scene of the first ever episode of Marshals in that way. The horse’s name was Tumbleweed, so I decided to call him TW, and he took great care of me. There were so many moving pieces to make this scene happen—I just hope the audience can see the work that went into the moment.”
As for the work that went into appearing so natural in the saddle, Kebbel has been riding since the age of 5. The 41-year-old former teen beauty queen from Winter Park, Florida, modeled full time before pursuing acting. Almost as soon as she arrived in Los Angeles and started auditioning, she landed a recurring role on the CW’s Gilmore Girls. Her career took off, leading to parts in John Tucker Must Die; The Grudge 2; Aquamarine; 9-1-1; the After franchise; Ballers, Midnight, Texas; Fifty Shades Free; The Vampire Diaries, and 90210, among others.
Now we meet her as Skinner, a character who plays her cards close to her chest. Quiet and guarded in public, she slowly opens up to her new team of fellow marshals. Both Montana locals, Skinner and Dutton understand each other. She respects who he is, especially his background as a Navy Seal and his kinship as a fellow Montanan. “Our familiarity with the area plays out a lot through the show,” Kebbel says. “As the episodes continue, you learn more about her background and why she is so guarded. The audience will be surprised to find that Belle is a bit of an adrenaline junkie.”
That could be because before coming to the U.S Marshals, she was undercover with the ATF. “A badass who is very feminine and always dresses in pinks, corals, and light blues,” Skinner goes all in on patrolling the Montana borderlands. And Kebbel was there for it. “Getting to work on these rescue missions where the team is carrying M4s and these huge rifles and doing these big stunts and learning how to work as a team was incredible,” she says.
It’s yet-another chance to leverage her horseback bona fides. Her lifelong experience with horses was showcased when she starred as Maggie Keller, the owner of Keller Ranch, an equine therapy facility in Nashville in the 2025 Lifetime movie Thank God: Christmas at Keller Ranch. Her character worked with an injured professional hockey player who was able to get his confidence and trust back through his work with Keller and her horses.
“That was the first project where I was able to blend my passion for horses with my passion for work—and the first time I was able to ride on camera. I’m so involved with equine therapy behind the scenes, and blending these two loves together on the movie was incredible.”
Constantly working, Kebbel is starring in the I Can Only Imagine sequel alongside Milo Ventimiglia and Dennis Quaid.
As gratifying as those opportunities are, it’s the chance to ride on the job that thrills Kebbel the most: “I think I came out of my mother's womb knowing that I wanted to ride horses.”
