Wes Bentley Says His ‘Yellowstone’ Character Was Already a Lost Soul — What Is He Now Without His Father?

answered its largest looming question with last week’s season 5B premiere when the series revealed that departed cast member ‘s John Dutton has died, the result of . With its second episode in the , mastermind again wasted little time before delivering on the next highly anticipated moment: What will happen when warring siblings ( ) and Jamie Dutton ( ) come face to face? viewers got that answer when the second episode returned to the present timeline and Jamie, Montana’s Attorney General, finds his sister waiting for him in his office. In her bones, Beth knows that Jamie is responsible for their father’s death, but she needed to look him in the eyes in order to get her proof.

When Jamie can’t look his sister in the eyes, she slaps him. She slaps him again, and again, and he still can’t meet her gaze. Beth storms out of the office with the proof she needed — along the way, she body-slams Jamie’s girlfriend , who viewers now know orchestrated the hit on John, with Jamie’s knowledge — and she calls her other brother, ( ) to tell him what Kayce had trouble believing, until now: Their brother is responsible for their father’s murder.



“Jamie is in a place where he’s dangerous because he’s unpredictable and he’s unpredictable because he’s taken a big, wild swing right now and if this doesn’t go well, he knows it’s probably over,” Bentley tells of his character, who finds comfort in Sarah after taking the beating from Beth. In the chat below (which took place ahead of the season 5B premiere), Bentley talks about getting back into Jamie’s head after the , looks ahead to what Jamie can be when finally free of his father, and weighs in on if he would like to stick around if does continue on with *** We had some time from when I first read the script to then get back into it, and what I did do is that I had never really watched the show back, except for season one. I just didn’t have a chance to catch up to the show while we were shooting it.

Then I found that was actually working for me, so I had planned to wait to watch the show back later [after we were done filming]. . I’m dying to watch the show, but it was more of a choice where it felt it was helping me to do something with the character that I thought maybe I wouldn’t do if I was watching it as an observer.

But in this break, I decided I would start watching it again to get myself back into the groove. What I ended up doing was actually watching some scenes. Because I didn’t want to have my full watch yet, I’m still waiting for that.

Oh, yeah. I watched that one. And the one before that.

I watched a few key scenes that I hadn’t quite seen yet. ( ) It’s funny, I think I may have said this to you when we talked about this last time, I’m not a Method actor in the sense that I need to fully embody the character or dive that far in all the time. But when playing this role for seven years, it felt like it happened to me.

It felt like the Method was happening without me really desiring it! So yeah, it hit quick. As soon as I was back in, it’s everywhere. Mostly for me with Jamie it’s the self-loathing and the emptiness, the shallowness.

He’s lost and has no identity whatsoever. It’s really hard to let that be in my world and figure out when I’m feeling that way and when he’s feeling that way. So that was back, for sure.

I can’t say too much; I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, because I can pick up any little hint of foreshadowing. But it is more dramatic and more intense that it has ever been. The stakes are higher than ever — they don’t chill out! They’re not making peace.

So where we saw them at their last, we’re going right into that feeling of danger. Jamie is in a place where he’s dangerous because he’s unpredictable and he’s unpredictable because he’s taken a big, wild swing right now and if this doesn’t go well, he knows it’s probably over. So there are a lot of stakes here and Taylor [Sheridan] really delivered.

The things I’m about to say, I want to be clear, won’t tip off anything, but for John’s relationship with Jamie, it’s a more important relationship than with Beth. Beth’s anger with Jamie is something that Jamie did to her. Jamie moved on in life from that because he could, and he’s a jerk and didn’t look back on it until later in life.

His focus was always at John, and Beth keeps popping up in the way to start fights and resolve her things. So for Jamie, everything he’s doing in life..

. John is the one who told him who to be. And when Jamie became that, John demanded so much more out of him and was never satisfied with him.

So if John’s gone, and Jamie is already a lost soul, what is he going to be then? Who is he aiming at? What’s his fight about? What are his real feelings? So, not to say what’s coming, but if you don’t have John for Jamie, it’s interesting to find out: What is that to him? So maybe we’ll see that. Well, I actually haven’t worked much with him or anyone in the main cast much for a couple seasons in a row, I think ever since the 2020 season four. I’ve really had sparse interactions, so I’m used to not seeing any of them! I’m off on my own storylines and my own sets that no one else ever enters.

( ) So I kind of got used to that with the entire cast. I felt what I felt in every season that I read, I felt the power of it. It’s pretty powerful, these scripts and these shows.

I know they’re very dramatic, but that’s sort of the power in them. And this season I think is the most of that. It’s the most emotional and I think the most invigorating in the sense that the danger is palpable and immediate, so I was really satisfied.

It was quite a nice feeling to know that’s where we were heading. But also, it’s sad because I’m invested in the story, and only sad in the sense that we’ve come to a certain point in the story where there are changes. Oh yeah, I’d be interested in both.

It’s a very hard character to play but if asked to carry on, I would do so. It’s been great to work with Taylor, so anything in his universe. But at the same time, I’m an actor who was thinking I’d be doing films my whole career so six weeks was the longest I was going to be invested in anything.

So I’d be excited to also move on in life and see what’s next for me out there. I want to do this for as long as I can. If I’m lucky enough.

Yeah I think we will see that, mostly from the fact that the show is a hit more than where the culture is going right now. In Hollywood it’s simple math. “Was that a hit? Let’s do a version of that, please.

I’ll take 10 of those!” ( ) is a big, unexpected hit. It’s actually a relief that it wasn’t cornered into being just called a red-state show. I do think it avoids a lot of the current stuff while speaking vaguely to us in general terms.

So I think in some ways, people can escape. While it is something about us, it’s also a little bit not about us, and so we are allowed to escape into it and we can all do that together. *** releases new episodes in its six-episode season 5B on Sundays at 8 p.

m. on Paramount Network, followed by a linear premiere on CBS at 10 p.m.

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