Stephen Kay, the main director of Landman, has worked on plenty of TV shows and films, and explains the difference like this: On a TV show, you’re usually cooking in someone else’s kitchen, with whatever food and equipment you find there. In a movie, you get to set up your own kitchen.
But Landman is more like a movie, he says: “We’re stocking our cupboards and picking our utensils.”
Kay feels so at home with the oil-industry drama — created by Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace, and inspired by Wallace’s podcast, Boomtown – because he directed six of the 10 episodes of Season 1, and all 10 episodes of Season 2. Kay also plans to return to direct all of Season 3.
In films, the director generally leads. In TV, the showrunner generally leads, and each episode has a different director who takes cues from the showrunner. There are exceptions, of course, like HBO’s The White Lotus, for which Mike White writes and directs every episode.
Sheridan’s empire of Paramount+ shows also breaks the TV norm. Veterans of his hit Yellowstone are the lead directors on several of his shows: Ben Richardson has directed almost every episode of the spinoff 1923, and Christina Alexandra Voros directed all six episodes of the first season of the spinoff The Madison.
Like most Sheridan shows, Landman has a stacked cast: Season 2 includes Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Ali Larter, Michelle Randolph, Jacob Lofland, Andy Garcia and Sam Elliott. Kay gives every character their due, and guides the production skillfully from cinematic beauty to workplace drama to screwball comedy, often involving Larter.
Kay says he and Sheridan treat the series like a movie, but with time for longer arcs.
“It’s a shared piece, and you’re the one there every day. He trusts that you’re going to execute his dream. But it’s our language,” Kay says.
Stephen Kay on Landman and Family
Kay likes a sense of family on set, and especially loves working with his actual family — his wife, Piper Perrabo, with whom he first worked on the show Covert Affairs, and his daughter, Lilli Kay. He got to work with both on Yellowstone, an experience he describes as “the greatest”: “I would work with both of them all day, every day, if I was allowed,” he says.
While some directors might tremble at the notion of directing almost an entire series, Kay doesn’t. He has a work ethic like that of, well, a Taylor Sheridan character. And he wants everyone on his sets to feel similarly invested.
“I like rolling up my sleeves, and if something needs to get picked up, I’m more than happy to go pick it up. I like when everybody’s a filmmaker. I like when everybody feels like they’re part of telling the story,” he says.
He started out as an actor, and kept a role on General Hospital as Reginald the butler even after he signed up to direct Sylvester Stallone in 2000’s Get Carter. He says one day Stallone ribbed him about it on set — “the butler, you kidding me?” — but Kay didn’t let the soap opera gig go until 2003. “I get scared when I’m not working,” he explains.
Another of his early roles was playing “the most over the top version of a director” in Lethal Weapon 2. While that character was excitable, Kay keeps an even keel: “I try not to raise my voice,” he explains.
He also keeps a sense of humor about things — like all the websites that say he’s from New Zealand.
“I was born in Philadelphia and I did a movie in New Zealand where I stayed for like a year, and it came up on IMDb that I was from New Zealand. My daughter, who was I think like 10 when it came out, she’s like, ‘Please, Can we keep it? Let it just stay. It’s so much more interesting.’ And she does an amazing Kiwi accent. And so we decided we’re from New Zealand.”
Landman is now streaming on Paramount+.
Main image: Landman director and executive producer Stephen Kay with stars Ali Larter and Billy Bob Thornton. Paramount+