Kayla Wallace’s work on Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart got positively clocked by Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton as they started shooting new Taylor Sheridan show about oil.
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“(It) was Day 1 of filming for the whole series. That was Day 1 for everybody. And I mean, it was a whirlwind,” said Wallace, who only had a brief introduction to Thornton a week before shooting began in February.
“It was really just a nice story, and kind of put me at ease. And that just goes to show how down to earth he is. He’s very kind and thoughtful,” said Wallace.
Landman, which is streaming now on Paramount+, is set in the oil business in West Texas. The series was inspired by Christian Wallace’s (no relation to Kayla) podcast Boomtown and it focuses on Tommy Norris (Thornton) who is a grizzled, chain-smoking, booze swilling landman (a person who negotiates with landowners to acquire leases for oil exploration), who is covered with a film of dust and disappointment.
He works for the much slicker — and one can only assume will turn out to be more sinister — oil company boss Monty Miller, played by John Hamm. The series also stars Ali Larter as Norris’s ex-wife, as well as Jacob Lofland and Michelle Randoph as his kids.
Demi Moore shows up in the series as Miller’s wife Cami.
Wallace plays Rebecca Falcone; an intimidating liability attorney from Houston with a don’t-mess-with-me glare you can see from across a Texas plain. She ends up in Midland and Norris’s life after a well explodes and kills a crew.
“Rebecca grew up in Chicago, so she’s kind of a city girl in this world of oil and dirt and danger. But she’s extremely smart and good at her job,” said Wallace about her character, who comes to town to legally clean up “crazy messes.”
Part family and workplace drama, Landman is a classic Sheridan offering, packed with unambiguous characters that make no bones about where they stand in the risk-and-reward world of oil-and-gas, which Norris explains in a voice-over after being held at gunpoint by a Mexican drug cartel in the first few minutes of Episode 1.
“The oil-and-gas industry makes $3 billion (American) a day in pure profit. It generates over $4.3 trillion a year in pure revenue. It’s the seventh largest industry in the world. Ranked ahead of food production, automobile production, coal-mining and at $1.4 trillion the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t even crack the top 10,” says the voice-over as a bloodied Norris lights a cigarette and pulls a beer from the cooler and swigs it in his pickup.
“The industries listed ahead of oil-and-gas are completely dependent on oil-and-gas. The more they grow, the more we grow. That’s the scale. That’s the size of this thing. And it’s only getting bigger.
“But before any of that money is made you’ve got to get the lease. You gotta secure the rights and lock up the surface and babysit the owners and babysit the crews. Then manage the police and press when the babies refuse to be sat. That’s my job, secure the lease and then manage the people. The first part is pretty simple. It’s the second part that can get you killed.”
When Wallace first auditioned for the show, she wasn’t reading lines meant for Rebecca. The Shawnigan Lake native originally tried out for the role of Ainsley, the sexually outgoing 17-year-old daughter to Thornton’s character. After a series of self-tapes, Wallace flew to Texas and read in front of Sheridan, Wallace and the producers.
“It was crazy. That was my first in-person audition experience since COVID,” said Wallace.
After that, Wallace said she put the audition out of her mind and went on with her life and took a trip to Los Angeles with her husband. While there, she got the biggest call of her career.
“Taylor called me, and he first told me that the role of Ainsley wasn’t going to work out, and then he wanted to offer me the role of Rebecca. And I was absolutely floored and in shock in the best way.
“And, yeah, I went from 17-year-old, fun daughter of Billy Bob Thornton to this really smart corporate lawyer. And I couldn’t have been more pleased,” said Wallace.
“He definitely is a guy who knows what he wants. So, if he gets it on the first take, he’ll maybe do one more and move on. But if something needs to be worked, he’ll absolutely spend the time,” said Wallace about working with Sheridan.
“It took me a second to get used to the … liveliness of it. I come from a world where everything’s very rehearsed and the marks are very specific. It was a lot of fun to have the freedom that Taylor gives.”
When Wallace booked the show, she knew Thornton was attached as the lead. But she didn’t know who was going to play the pivotal role of the big boss.
“I didn’t know about John Hamm until I was in the hair trailer, and our hair team was putting up cast photos of everybody,” said Wallace. “I didn’t know who was cast as Monty Miller, but I knew they were going to get somebody amazing. And I could just see in the corner of my eye the photo, and I saw half of John Hamm’s face, and I was just over the moon.”
As for her screen time with the Mad Men star, Wallace offered a slight smile and two words: “We interact.”