Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser on years of steamy scenes and rivalry on Yellowstone – and what’s next

Tom MurrayThu, May 14, 2026 at 8:05 AM UTC

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Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser first rode onto our screens back in 2018 as Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, the combustible power couple at the centre of Taylor Sheridan’s Montana-set ranch drama Yellowstone. He had the heavy, simmering menace of Tony Soprano in a cowboy hat; she was the whiskey-swilling firecracker with one-liners that could cut you in half. Thanks, in part, to the drama’s MAGA-friendly mix of sex, guns and land ownership, it drew a fiercely loyal audience far beyond the usual prestige-TV crowd and has gone on to spawn an empire of prequels and spin-offs. Now, Beth and Rip have a show all of their own: Dutton Ranch.

As a couple, Beth and Rip share an undeniable chemistry that helped anchor Yellowstoneand provided a brief respite amid all its brutal violence and betrayal. But when I meet the two actors in a posh London hotel room, they make an unlikely pairing.

Hauser, 51, grew up on a 150-acre ranch in Oregon and looks as though he could have stepped straight off set, dressed in crocodile-skin Stetson boots tucked beneath dark jeans, with a gold chain peeking through his open shirt collar. His deep tan sharpens the contrast of his bright blue eyes and white smile. Forty-eight-year-old Reilly, by contrast, was born and raised in Kingston upon Thames and earned an Olivier Award nomination for her stage work long before finding mainstream success on screen. She is demure, elegant, and, frankly, very English.

They first met in 2017 – briefly – at Yellowstone mastermind Taylor Sheridan’s house for a barbecue. Hauser’s Rip would be the loyal enforcer, taken in as an orphan by Beth’s father, ranch owner John Dutton (Kevin Costner). Then, with no rehearsals, the actors were thrust, quite literally, into their first scene together. “It was an interesting scene to start with,” says Hauser, flashing a wry smile. It was a sex scene, of course – Beth and Rip aren’t exactly short of them. “Taylor threw us right into the fire. He was like, ‘Let’s see how these two do,’” says Hauser. “He likes to do that,” adds Reilly.

The show’s swaggering masculinity was part of its appeal, though Sheridan also faced criticism for the level of gratuitous nudity and the way women were sexualized. The early seasons came before the words “intimacy coordinators” had entered the Hollywood lexicon. Reilly remembers her first scene: “I was in the bathtub. There was a scene where [Beth] just takes bottles of champagne and has a bath outside in a water trough.” It also happened to coincide with a set visit from the producers. “There was a coachload of network execs,” Reilly recalls. “I was like, ‘I’m butt naked here. Do you think there’s a better time for them to come?’”

Cole Hauser: ‘Taylor [Sheridan] threw us right into the fire. He was like, “Let’s see how these two do”’ (Getty Images for Paramount+)

Yellowstone reached its tumultuous conclusion in 2024 after a falling out between Costner and Sheridan over scheduling issues. After an increasingly public stalemate, Costner left the show midway through the final series, and his character was unceremoniously killed off after six defining years as its backbone. Amid the uncertainty, Reilly already knew Beth was coming back for a spin-off. “I didn’t really say goodbye to it,” she says. It was only while filming Dutton Ranch, when they briefly left Texas to film some early sequences back in Montana, that the penny dropped.

“I love working in Texas, don’t get me wrong, but Montana just has such a soul,” she tells me. “Even though there are some real key players [from Yellowstone] who are along for the ride, and it’s the same people making it, it is a very different show, and I said goodbye to [Yellowstone] then. I remember driving from Bozeman to the airport, and I just felt really emotional, realising, ‘Oh, that time in my life has ended.’”

Power couple: Beth and Rip are back with a new ranch and a whole new set of enemies to be made in ‘Dutton Ranch’ (Emerson Miller/Paramount+)

In Dutton Ranch, the location may have changed, but the DNA of its forerunner remains firmly intact. As with its predecessor, most episodes of the new drama follow a tried-and-tested formula: something bad happens; Rip punches someone in the face; all is well again. This time, there’s a twist, though. “The audience knows what they’re capable of. But all these new characters in Texas, they don’t,” Reilly explains to me. There is, therefore, an extra layer of delight for Yellowstone fans when an ignorant new baddie squares off against Rip and the inevitable ass-whooping ensues.

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Yet beneath the flying fists and familiar chaos, Dutton Ranch is also quietly softening some of its roughest edges. In one revealing early scene, Beth steps up to put an injured horse out of its misery, only to find she cannot pull the trigger. Instead, at great personal expense, she insists on having a kindly vet (played by Ed Harris) nurse it back to health. “Beth is a little bit more in touch with another part of herself that I really wanted to lean into this season,” says Reilly. “With her getting older, there is a grief in her after the loss of her father, who was everything to her, and the horse represented something that she could take care of. Beth is great when she’s got something to protect and look after.”

Reilly has spoken previously about hitting her “quota of the younger Beth,” who was all brash arrogance and whiskey-fuelled volatility. “As I get older, Beth gets older, and this is a woman who’s experienced a lot, and I really was interested in just looking under different rocks,” she says. Reilly remembers Dutton Ranch showrunner Chad Feehan having the word “unmoored” next to Beth on the board in his writers’ room. “I don’t think I’d ever felt Beth unmoored,” Reilly says of seasons past. “She’s someone who has always known where she’s going.”

Run like the wind: Beth and Rip leave Montana for a fresh start in Texas in ‘Dutton Ranch’ (Emerson Miller/Paramount+)

Rip is unmoored, too. In Montana, he was the big dog, with dozens of ranch hands under his command. In Texas, he’s downsized and is isolated by the fact that many of the ranchers speak Spanish. “If we’re going to have success throughout the years with this show, God willing, we have to start them somewhere low,” says Hauser, “towards the Earth, and see them actually take the stairs, not an elevator, but take the stairs of life.”

Ed Harris makes for pleasant company as the kindly vet, Everett McKinney, in ‘Dutton Ranch’ (Emerson Miller/Paramount+)

Along the way, they will be helped (by Harris’s vet) and hampered (by Annette Bening’s rival ranch owner). Sheridan has a penchant for inserting legendary actors into his Yellowstone universe – take the arrival of Dame Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford in the prequel series, 1923. In Dutton Ranch, working with Harris was, quite simply, “an honour” for Hauser, who places him in his “top five” American actors of all time. Five-time Oscar nominee Bening, meanwhile, does not rehearse and refuses to do each take in the same way, Reilly tells me. “She is constantly looking and playing. And the way that she lent into this character was so unexpected. She’s a powerful woman, and she’s not to be messed with, but she’s also flirtatious and warm and charming, and it’s just so unnerving.”

Annette Bening stars as the dastardly Beulah Jackson – a rival land owner (Lauren Smith/Paramount+)

Just weeks ahead of the series launch, it was reported that Feehan had been “quietly let go” from Dutton Ranch, and will not return if there is a second season. A report in Puck claimed Feehan clashed with Reilly and Hauser on set and left Sheridan dissatisfied with the way he ran production. Today, the actors are reluctant to dwell on the situation. “Those are just things that are out of our control,” says Hauser. Reilly is similarly diplomatic: “We all just made a really difficult season of TV, birthing something together, and we’re so grateful for Chad.”

While Feehan may have written the series, its soul belongs to its stars, who have inhabited these characters for almost a decade. Reilly feels Sheridan “handed the show over” to them. There is pressure, though, in carrying forward one of television’s biggest modern franchises without the man who built it – and without Costner looming large. “It's almost like a graduation from Taylor, but it’s scary to unmoor from that,” says Reilly. “We’re definitely able to have a voice this year. And I think the only reason why I want one is because I’m so protective of Beth and Rip, and the show.”

After all these years, Beth and Rip now have to figure out who they are without the Yellowstone ranch beneath their feet. And so, it seems, do the actors who play them.

The first two episodes of ‘Dutton Ranch’ will be available to stream on Paramount+ from May 15 with episodes airing weekly on Fridays thereafter

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”