Randolph On What Billy Bob Thornton Is Really Like

Landman star Michelle Randolph’s real-life relationships with her on-screen parents couldn’t sound more different.

In fact, if the two actors were her real-life parents, than her on-screen mom would probably be the one she’d actually have that infamous birds and bees talk with, not her on-screen dad.

Although in real life, Randolph admits, those words would never come from her mouth.

• Michelle Randolph plays Ainsley Norris on the hit Paramount+ show, Landman. She also plays Elizabeth Strafford on Taylor Sheridan’s 1923.
• Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) is her character’s father, and Angela (Ali Larter) is her mom.
• New episodes of the show drop every Sunday.

Related: Why Landman Is Even Better Than Yellowstone

A clip from an early episode where Ainsley tells Tommy her “golden rule” for safe sex is going viral at the moment. Randolph shares that she first received her Landman script a year ago, and since then, she’s been working with movement coaches, dialect coaches and more to develop a character that she says is nothing like her.

“I’m an over-thinker. I’m very filtered,” she shares. “(Ainsley) brought out a side of my personality that had been tucked deeply away. And I think I’ve taken little pieces of her with me and I’m happy about it.”

While she’s told other outlets about how hard it was to look at Thornton and say words not fit for families, the California native told ToC how comfortable she felt at the moment.

“Billy is so wonderful,” she shares. “He just has this calming presence, and it never felt awkward or uncomfortable to film scenes with him. It was just — he really ended up feeling like a father figure.”

Her relationship with Larter is more of a friendship. They absolutely have as much fun as you’d imagine filming. In fact, there is even a spirit of improv that is not present on shows like 1923, which was more tightly scripted.

“Ainsley is written as this very impulsive, unfiltered 17-year-old,” Randolph says. “She’s a wild child, and it was really important for me when I got the scripts to find any moment of humanity in her and just trying to find ways to humanize her.”

Larter was able to humanize Angela as well, which makes their repeated wilder moments on screen palpable, if not downright enjoyable. A more casual approach would have turned them into caricatures.