Not the worst problem to have, honestly.
The new Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch is off to a hot start, and it finds Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) reprising their roles, now in Texas, and it sounds like filming in Texas was quite an experience.
The show is already a big success with fans, as it had the single biggest debut on Paramount+ history with nearly 13 million viewers. That’s more than Landman, Tulsa King, The Madison, any of the other Yellowstone spinoffs, and way more than even MobLand, who had nearly 9 million. It feels like Yellowstone Season 6, and fans are loving it.
But considering the crew is now filming in Fort Worth and around Texas, they were presented with entirely new terrain and weather, and considering how much they film outside, it was obviously a big change to go from the mountains (primarily Montana and Utah) to the blistering Texas heat. Most of the time, it was around 106 degrees, and Hauser revealed in a recent interview with People that he had a hard time keeping weight on because of it.
Rip is obviously a very rugged, muscular cowboy with some meat on his bones, Hauser says he typically put on about 25 pounds during filming to fill out and get that signature Rip look that ladies know and love,
“Yeah, I was trying to keep weight on. I mean, I usually put on about 25 pounds, but it was hard to keep it on. I was sweating it out.”
Like I said, not the worst problem to have in my humble opinion…
Whatever he’s doing is clearly working, though:
And the new Texas terrain presented several new challenges, including snakes… lots, and LOTS, of rattlesnakes.
During an appearance on the The Kelly Clarkson Show, Kelly, who is a Fort Worth native, asked if they had any snake incidents, because Texas has so many rattlesnakes and other kinds of snakes
“In Fort Worth, look, I know because I lived there, and there are a lot of rattlesnakes there. People don’t realize how many snakes are there. So I imagine y’all had kind of a time with that.”
Hauser confirmed that they caught an insane number of rattlesnakes… and 3,400 snakes, to be exact, over the course of eight months:
“Eight months, 3,400 rattlesnakes we caught.”
I never in a million years would have guessed they caught that many in just eight months, but that sounds like my worst nightmare and luckily, it sounds like all of the cast managed to stay far away from them.
Reilly also explained that they have professional snake wranglers on set that go ahead of them when they filmed outside to make sure no one had any issues, and she says she would be running through fields in stilettos just praying they got them all:
“We have snake wranglers, like literally six of them on set at any point and I’m in these stiletto heels running through fields. And I’m just praying, like, please let them have gotten all the snakes in this vicinity. and they would just pick them up and put them somewhere far away from us.”
She’s a much braver woman than I am… sounds like Texas gave them a run for their money in every way you could imagine.
You can stream Dutton Ranch now on Paramount+.
@people #ColeHauser says he was struggling to keep the weight on while filming #DuttonRanch ♬ original sound – People Magazine
