Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly Wanted A Break From Beth Dutton, So She Changed ‘It Up’ With New Role

Published: Feb. 22. 2021 2:37 PM

Kelly Reilly has been a mainstay on the series Yellowstone since the first episode aired back in 2018. She stars on the hit cable series alongside Kevin Costner as his on-screen daughter, and she is a force to be reckoned with on the modern-day western. Now that filming has wrapped on Season 4, which has yet to debut on Paramount Network, Reilly has taken up a new role and it certainly sounds like a break away from her work as Yellowstone’s Beth Dutton.

Beth Dutton is a strong, and at times, a pretty wild character. Having firmly found her footing as the highly opinionated TV sibling, Kelly Reilly almost completely flipped the script with her latest feature role as Isabelle in the period horror film Eight For Silver, which was one of this year’s Sundance submissions. She spoke to Screen Rant about her character in the Sean Ellis-directed film, saying she wanted to switch things up career-wise to keep her tastes from getting too stale. In the actress’ own words:

I live in America, and I’ve been working for the past few years on a show called Yellowstone, where I play a very fierce character. As an actor, you really want to keep changing it up for yourself and dipping into different things to keep your own taste bud alive. Playing someone so utterly different from this character that I had been so immersed in for a few years, I was just like, Yes, I’m in!’

Eight for Silver mixes its 19th century setting with a potentially supernatural narrative about philosophy and werewolves. It may sound like it has a lot going on, but a lot of the drama for Kelly Reilly’s character is unspoken, as her character Isabelle is one of few words. That’s not because she’s an overly simple character, however. Still, anyone not “extremely outspoken” counts as a far cry from Reilly’s Beth Dutton, as her Yellowstone character’s complexity is intensified by her loudness and language, where Isabelle relies on more subtle mannerisms and the things left unsaid.

If Kelly Reilly was looking for a challenging character to hone her acting skills in a way that likely couldn’t happen on Yellowstone, she sure found it. That’s not to say that Yellowstone isn’t capable of all kinds of brilliance, of course, just not the supernatural kind. In the same interview, Reilly gave her assurance that the Paramount series, at least in her opinion, is just getting better and better. Here’s how she put it:

I think the seasons are just getting better, personally. And our audience is getting bigger as well. It’s become a real thing.

The show sure is getting a pretty substantial following, as it now is even getting a spin-off thanks to co-creator Taylor Sheridan’s new overall deal with CBS Viacom. The new series will be called Y: 1883, and it’ll be a prequel reflecting back on how the Dutton family found its origins in Montana.

Kelly Reilly may have taken a break from her Beth Dutton character, but that doesn’t mean Yellowstone has hit any hitches. It’s already wrapped on filming for Season 4, so we can expect to revisit her character when the new season premieres later this year. We presumably won’t, however, be seeing her in the prequel, as it takes place long before the birth of her character. But she will be with us in a way, as fans may be able to recognize the source of her fierce spirit within her ancestors. In the meantime, you can catch Eight for Silver on VOD.