Landman Star Explains Why She’s “Thankful” The Show Undersold Her Character At The Beginning

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Landman season 1, episode 10!Landman star Michelle Randolph explains why she’s “thankful” the show undersold her character at the beginning, only to give her a deeper story later. Randolph portrayed Tommy’s (Billy Bob Thornton) daughter Ainsley in the oil-focused drama, a 17-year-old whose introduction played into stereotypes of a spoiled young girl with a focus on fashion and boys. However, despite controversy surrounding Ainsley’s portrayal in Landman, the show slowly offered her more character development. As she becomes enamored with star quarterback Ryder Simpson (Mitchell Slaggert), she reveals a more thoughtful side to herself as the series progresses.

Speaking with Deadline, Randolph explained how grateful she was that Ainsley started out less-developed during Landman‘s early episodes. She explained this was the case for both her character and Ali Larter’s Angela, Tommy’s wife, with both characters being introduced “at their most extreme.” This allowed both of them to grow over the course of the story, evolving into more fleshed-out characters that subverted the tropes they were originally introduced with. Check out what Randolph had to say below:

When you start a show, it’s so hard, because you don’t know your full character. Knowing who she is in episode 10 was really hard when episode one was just coming out. I was like, that’s not all she has to do! But also, in general, we meet Ainsley and Angela at their most extreme, then we get to see them evolve. You don’t want to meet the fully evolved version of a character. If you don’t get to see the growth, then it’s not fun to watch. So I am thankful that we got to meet Ainsley at point A and hopefully by the time the show’s done, however many seasons, we’ll meet her at Z.

More to come…

Source: Deadline