Billy Bob Thornton from “Landman” isn’t from Texas. Don’t tell Hollywood.

Billy Bob Thornton shrugs when I ask why he plays so many Texans. With his constant you-know-what-to-eat grin, he takes control of his American spirit. “If you’re from the South, you must be from Texas, right?” he says, imitating clueless film executives.

That doesn’t quite explain it, because he also fooled the locals. “Billy Bob’s a Texan, isn’t he?” a good ol’ boy asked to the crowd of good ol’ boys and girls. We crowd into Main Street Crossing in Tomball, thirty miles northwest of downtown Houston, to hear Thornton sing with his rock band, the Boxmasters. The pearl-clutching fan adopted Thornton’s Texanism almost by faith, intermittently recounting tales of decades spent riding bulls and seeing George Strait before he became King George.

He could be forgiven for the mistake: Although Thornton was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and grew up in nearby Malvern, he has long been one of Hollywood’s standard on-screen Texans. The actor, director, musician and screenwriter is rural yet street-smart, fiercely independent but old-fashioned, exuding the qualities we think we have too.

The 69-year-old has played popular Texas characters, including Permian High School coach Gary Gaines in the film version of Friday Night Lights and Davy Crockett in The Alamo. Now he’s giving birth to another: Tommy Norris, the titular countryman in Yellowstone The new Paramount+ series from creator (and Texan) Taylor Sheridan arrives November 17th.Countryman based on Texas Monthly and the Imperative Entertainment podcast BoomtownAnd TM is executive producer.) Thornton’s character is an oil industry fixer tasked with bridging the gap between the roughnecks in the West Texas fields and the high-profile executives who rely on them.

Thornton refuses to throw himself into far-fetched roles – it’s now his turn as US President Actually love Regardless – instead, he delves into characters he believes he can truly inhabit. “I’ve been known to play all these different things, but at the end of the day they’re all what I would be in this case,” he says. “I was once asked to play Nixon. I said, “If I do Nixon, I’ll look like Dan Aykroyd.” Saturday Night Live. It will be an impression.’ ”

As he waits for the Boxmasters show to begin, he looks like someone Nixon would be afraid of. We’re sitting on the porch of the cottage that serves as the venue’s green room, and he’s wearing a black Dodgers hat, black jeans, and a black Henley shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel with the sleeves cut off to reveal his ink show. Other accessories include a Bud Light, which is exchanged a few times during our conversation, and a pack of these American spirits, which explains why Thornton is sitting outside in suburban Houston in early September, chain-smoking in the weather he is described as “soupy”.

He feels comfortable here, outside of a venue where his band plays regularly. Thornton lived in Tomball (and got his first tattoo) before moving to LA in 1981 when he was trying to make it as a musician while working at his bandmate’s father’s construction equipment rental company. His greatest success during this time was as a drummer in a ZZ Top cover band called Tres Hombres. “Billy Gibbons called us the best little cover band in Texas,” Thornton says proudly, adding that the legendary Houston rocker is now one of his best friends. His ties to Lone Star aren’t just striking – he also spent a lot of time with his extended family in North Texas. Now an empty nester living in Southern California with his sixth wife, he needs little prodding to gush about his children: “She’s the intellectual one,” he says of his youngest, Bella, who has just started college has. “We are so proud of her.”

He gained his first filming experience in Texas in Abilene, where he also filmed The stars fell on Henrietta (1995) alongside Robert Duvall – another non-Texan often claimed by the Lone Star State. “There’s something to it [acting in Texas] It automatically feels authentic when you do it,” says Thornton. “It’s an authentic state.”

His early portrayals of Davy Crockett and Coach Gaines cemented his Texanism in the public imagination. His attitude towards Crockett, although not quite as lasting as friday night lights, is important to him. A group of Texas historians told him he had created the most accurate and best on-screen depiction of Crockett available. Gaines was an easier task in some ways — Thornton’s father was a high school basketball coach — and more difficult in others. “Gary Gaines told me, ‘I don’t really swear,'” Thornton says, recalling a pre-shooting phone call with the legendary Permian High coach. “I said, ‘Well, this will certainly be a departure.’ ”

For countryman, Thornton returned to Odessa, where Friday Night Lights was shot, and even to Permian Stadium, where all of the film’s game footage was shot. “When I walked in I got a chill,” he says. “It was exactly as I remembered it and I looked young [Landman] Extras whose mother or father were extras Friday Night Lights.” Off-camera, he entered the locker room to repeat one of his famous pep talks to the players. Everywhere in Odessa he ran into old friends – including a local bartender.

His route back to West Texas was through Yellowstone Cinematic Universe: Thornton’s stunning cameo as a swaggering lawman in the prequel series, 1883, inspired Sheridan to give him his own franchise. “I’m writing a show for you,” he told Thornton 1883 premiered around the time Sheridan was working with Ex Texas Monthly Employee Christian Wallace, the host of the Boomtown Podcast, create Countryman. “I’ve never seen a really in-depth film about the oil business,” Thornton says today. (Countrymanhe says, is “like a ten-hour movie.”

Although CountrymanThe cast includes Jon Hamm, Ali Larter and Demi Moore. The focus is on Thornton, who, as a tough crisis manager, ensures that the black gold is pumped and delivered – by stealing land and mineral rights from the border cartels, the pump and jack explosions and negotiations with lots of oil-rich businessmen who have more than theirs Want to share, all against the backdrop of dusty, sweaty West Texas. “He knows he’s not a real cowboy, but he’s a Texan,” Thornton says, joking about his character’s limited choice of outfits: white shirts with pearl buttons, cowboy hats and jeans. “I’ll see if I can wear tighter pants next year,” he says. “My pants are so loose I look like a hip-hop guy.” (He doesn’t.)

Countryman is built around Thornton, and it may or may not succeed depending on how addictive it is to watch him work the oil field. “I could see how much he cared about getting it right and portraying that [character] exactly,” says Wallace. “He really shows his full face here,” says Larter, who plays Thornton’s ex-wife Angela. “He has incredibly harsh physical scenes and then emotionally raw scenes with me.” On the porch in Tomball, Thornton gets a call from Larter just to say hello; They are all looking forward to filming the already confirmed second season together again in Fort Worth and Weatherford.

Until then, the Boxmasters will play more shows in support Love and hate in desperate places, their seventeenth album, released in August. On stage, Thornton wails to retro rock-and-roll songs like “I Must’ve Been High” and “Jayne Mansfield’s Car.” He strategically waits until the last three songs to get the audience to stand – a moment many use to take non-consensual selfies with the star.

“My job is to connect with the audience and take them with me,” he says before the show, perhaps referring to both his acting career and his musical one. (Thornton describes himself as a musician who has appeared in a few films – a humble brag if there ever was one.) “You have to make it clear to them that you’re not a star, just a guy trying to get them entertain.”

However, in today’s literal and figurative climate, he fears that some of it CountrymanA series about the dirty fossil fuel business will turn off potential audiences. “Don’t let the issue be your reason for doing it. . . Whatever your opinion is on that,” he says, appearing to be speaking not to the journalist sitting next to him but to an imaginary Emmy voter driving a Tesla. “Taylor is not the type of guy who wants to ruin the atmosphere. He’s just someone who’s trying to tell the truth about how this really works.” Physically he’s here in Texas, but mentally he’s in Hollywood, talking to yet another person who doesn’t understand what it means outside of LA to live

Sitting in the more authentic of his two adopted home states, Thornton takes a sip and a sip. Will he grab another Bud Light? He answers as if he were born and raised here in Tomball: “Yes, ma’am.”

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This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the caption “He’s not from Texas, but don’t tell Hollywood.” Subscribe today.

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Photo credit: Billy Bob/Landman: Emerson Miller/Paramount+; Oil rig: Karina Eremina/Getty