The chickens came home to roost in the mid-season finale of “Yellowstone” season 5 earlier this year, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the trains came home to the station. After John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and his kin spent years dumping the bodies of their enemies out at a remote location they call the “train station,” scheming Dutton sibling Jamie (Wes Bentley) finally revealed the truth about the dumping ground to his sister Beth (Kelly Reilly).
The scene got fans talking when the series left the air for a mid-season break in January, and it’s apparently one that also took a lot of trust between its two actors.
Bentley spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about shooting the big reveal, a scene that initially left Beth stunned before she decided it might be time for Jamie himself to take a trip to the train station. The Dutton family reached a whole new level of villainy here with a revelation that would lead each to plot the downfall of the other. It’s a scene that Bentley called “powerful.” He told THR:
“We care about each other so much, and we’ve worked through this so much since season one. I couldn’t be with anyone that I feel safer with. And she feels safe with me. We’re able to go so far because we feel safe.”
The scene partners check in on each other during intense moments
Wes Bentley said he and Kelly Reilly are so used to acting through intense situations together that they’ve learned to check in without saying a word. “Now, we’re able to not even talk about it,” he shared. “It’s just little taps on the back or glances to say, ‘Are you OK?’ And, ‘Go, go, go, you can give it. Let’s go there.'”
While Reilly’s Beth is a fan-favorite character, politician Jamie is treated like the black sheep of the family, and his inability to win their love has driven him to greater and greater lengths over the course of the show’s five se asons.
Off-screen, though, Reilly and Bentley apparently have a set relationship that’s based on “encouraging each other” through those brutal scenes. “She’s very giving off-camera; I hope I am the same for her because the lock is so important,” Bentley told THR.
He described the train station scene as one in which his performance “[gives] some power back that changed that dynamic” between the two, but ultimately noted the scene had a sense of “safety” to it despite the emotional intensity.
‘You need a couple of days sometimes’
When asked if the pair gave one another extra ‘taps on the back’ to check in after that train station scene, Wes Bentley said they “both do to each other, especially on takes where we feel particularly tapped in, and where we’re locked into each other.” And while filming the sequence felt safe, he admitted it’s not always easy to shake off that headspace.
“It’s rough going home,” Bentley revealed. “You need a couple of days, sometimes.” Surprisingly, Bentley said the showdown between Jamie and Beth Dutton wasn’t one of those rough days, though. “I felt more like an adrenaline rush I hadn’t felt, because of the power Jamie was feeling,” the actor told THR.
While fans are eager to find out whether Jamie or Beth will pull the trigger on a plan to take the other out (not to mention how Rip Wheeler will factor into all this), they’ll still have to wait a bit longer for an update on the drama. This is the first year “Yellowstone” has ever taken a mid-season break, and while there are plenty of other in-universe shows to enjoy during the off-season, the return date for the flagship series still hasn’t been announced.
A promo for part two of the fifth season has promised a summer return, but we’ll let you know more when the mid-season premiere date for the Paramount Network series is announced.