Taylor Sheridan put the cast of 1883 through the ringer, and one of the stars of the Yellowstone prequel limited series – Lamonica Garrett – is happy to talk about it.
1883, which only ran for one season and starred Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliot and Billy Bob Thornton, acted as an origin story for the Dutton family. It revealed how they settled in the Paradise Valley of Montana after making their way north from Texas, and it was very much critically acclaimed.
The two country stars in leading roles were phenomenal, and the show itself helped build out the world of Yellowstone that much more. Fans loved the show, and critics did too. One of the reasons people loved 1883 was because it felt so real, and Lamonica Garrett recently told Rich Eisen that the authenticity that came through was all thanks to Taylor Sheridan.
Garrett, who played Thomas in the Yellowstone prequel, said on The Rich Eisen Show that he initially thought just landing the job on the Sheridan show was the hard part. He sent in over 10 audition tapes in a 4 month, and eventually got the role he credits with changing trajectory of his career.
But once production started, Garrett quickly discovered that Taylor Sheridan takes his period pieces quite seriously:
“That show, as hard as it was to see what they went through back then, as the actor, that was the hardest job I’ve ever had. It’ll probably be the hardest job I’ll ever have, for a multitude of reasons.”
What are some of those reasons, you might be asking?
Well, Sheridan is often praised for his world building, and with 1883, he really immersed the cast in the late 1800s. Actors and actresses were not pampered… they were tested, and one of the ways was only allowing those on the show to eat food that people in 1883 would have eaten:
“With Taylor Sheridan, it just felt so real. Even when we were filming it, for the first month of shooting, none of the actors could eat modern day food. It was 1800s food. It was biscuits, gravy, beef. If you are a vegetarian on that set, I felt bad for you. It was time appropriate food from cowboy camp all the way through the first month of filming.”
And if you’ve never heard of Sheridan’s famous “Cowboy Camp” procedure, that’s just a period early on in production that familiarizes everyone with everything it takes to be a cowboy.
Garrett remembers there being very early mornings, and a whole lot of work that also doubled as bonding time for the cast:
“You get there, and if you haven’t ever ridden a horse before, you have to figure that out. Tim (McGraw) and Faith (Hill), they ride pretty well… everyday you are waking up at 6 a.m., four or five hours straight, you are riding. You go have lunch, you do wagon training…
Roping, just cowboy stuff. We did that for two weeks. More so it was bonding for the cast. Now that the cast is doing this every morning, we’re eating together, we’re living on a ranch together.”
Lamonica Garrett also touched on how 1883 was filmed during COVID, so the cast couldn’t go anywhere. That was another factor that made shooting the limited series challenging.
But the most grueling part of the entire experience for the actor behind the character Thomas? That would be following Tim McGraw and Faith Hill during the cast’s karaoke nights on the ranch:
“Any outlet we had came on Saturday nights, where we’d have karaoke night or something with Tim and Faith. I learned the hard way to not go behind Tim and Faith on karaoke night.”
