She’s a firecracker, and she owns it.
The second season of Landman premiered back in mid-November, and the show boasting a cast of Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Andy Garcia, Sam Elliott, Ali Larter, Jacob Lofland, and Michelle Randolph – among others – once again had massive ratings.
Season 2’s premiere holds the title of the biggest season or series premiere ever for Paramount+. More than 9 million people viewed the first episode of the second season in the first few days it was available on the streamer. That number was more than triple what the series premiere of Landman did in 2024.
So it’s another Taylor Sheridan hit, and of course, the entire show revolves around Billy Bob Thornton’s character Tommy Norris, who is an oilman doing his best to juggle the complications of the Texas oil industry with his rather intricate and sometimes explosive family life. If it feels as though Thornton is the perfect fit for the role, that’s because he is. Taylor Sheridan handpicked him to play the Landman lead, as the show creator does with many of his shows.
And of course, one of the more dynamic parts of the show focuses on his relationship with his onscreen wife, Angela Norris, who is played by Ali Larter, and she has said in the past how badly she wanted the role and how hard she had to fight for it, and there were several reasons as to why she wanted to be part of the Taylor Sheridan universe so badly.
During an interview with Who What Wear, Larter explained that she “deeply respects” Sheridan for leaving Hollywood and forging his own path, which is very difficult to do and obviously, he’s been incredibly successful at it, and she also talked about how deeply her character has resonated with so many women.
In many ways, Angela Norris reminds me a lot of Yellowstone firecracker Beth Dutton, as they both have very strong personalities and definitely don’t hold back when it comes to saying exactly what’s on their mind, and like Beth, Angela has become a bit of a polarizing character.
Some people find her really funny and endearing, while others see her as downright annoying in many of her outlandish scenes, and I can see both sides… sometimes I think she’s really entertaining, but other times, it seems like things just go a little too far and it’s obviously unrealistic, but it’s also a TV show, and I digress…
But overall, it sounds like the girls are loving Angela, as Ali explained in the interview that women come up to her all the time and tell her how much they love how “unapologetic” Angela is and how she embraces her life and who she is:
“It’s the women. Honestly, so many women have come up to me, and they love that I’m a woman of age that’s just doing it her way. She’s unapologetic about wanting to be sexy and bold and be with her husband.
She’s just incredibly alive in her body, and that they love. It makes them laugh—how she is with her daughter and that she’s not conforming to societal norms. That’s a big thing, and I think there’s a little part of all of us that just wants to be that rebellious in life, but life kind of holds us in a lane.
Angela doesn’t really have a lane.”
I think that’s completely true, and in all honesty, you really don’t see a lot of women in movies or TV shows that are portrayed like that, and so I think a lot of ladies do relate to some of those aspects of her character because it’s just so rare to see in Hollywood.
But if you think Ali hasn’t been intimidated by some of the scenes she’s had to do, think again…
In particular, the Bolognese scene from episode 5 in Season one, where she’s praying and goes off on an interesting tangent, was one she was nervous for:
“I think the Bolognese scene—episode 5 in the first season—where in the middle of making my toast I’m thanking God. I was like, ‘How the hell am I going to do this?!’
I just had to find a way that she’s so lost in this moment, and then she’s thanking God, and it’s all just living and breathing around her. When we’re doing those family dinner scenes, there’s such a support system around me.
You really see the dynamics of the family with the kids, [Cooper] and [Ainsley], and then [Tommy] is always provoking Angela, and then Angela explodes, and then she cries, and it’s just, What is this cycle that they’re doing?”
She also brought up that wild truffle scene in the first episode of Season 2:
“I think that’s where the white truffle scene in the first episode of season 2… You see that he’s talking about her hormones, and no woman wants that discussed at the dinner table, and she can go zero to 100.
Where I think you see us starting to grow is that we’re sitting on the floor after, and we can’t even look at each other because we’re so embarrassed by our behavior, and we’re trying to figure out who we are if we don’t have this. And then he finds out that terrible news about his mother, and they’re just quiet together.
I feel like we’re finding all these ways to show how they can relate to each other and how much of it is [that] the dinners are Angela’s stage. [Tommy] doesn’t want her on that stage, but she wants that stage. It’s so alive.”
In many ways, I think the details of the emotions is something a lot of women around her age can relate to, and she really doesn’t hold back when it comes to any aspect of her life, which is something I think many of us can find refreshing, even if you do think Angela is a little annoying… I think Tommy feels that way a lot of the time, too, but that’s what makes their relationship so funny.
