As Yellowstone charges forward in its tense third season, the writers for the Paramount
Network hit are continuing to explore new avenues for drama and intrigue in and around
the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. The character Teeter, for instance, injects a new dynamic
into life on the ranch, being the only woman working as a ranch hand after Avery's departure
in Season 2.
In a Season 3 sneak peek video from Paramount released ahead of the new season, the actress
who plays Teeter, Jennifer Landon, joked about landing the role, saying,
"There was a line [in the show] that if they were going to get a girl, she had to be ugly
or mean, and then they saw me somehow and they said, 'Perfect.'"
Teeter clearly doesn't lack for roughness, fitting right in with the other ranch hands
immediately, and brandishing a near-incomprehensible drawl.
"Where'd you learn to cowboy?"
Landon said Teeter's signature style of speaking is scripted that way.
"It's phonetically written. She just speaks the way her family speaks."
If you're thinking that Landon looks familiar and are wondering where you've seen her before,
perhaps in a role with a bit more enunciation, there are plenty of places to look. Landon
has starred on several soap operas over the last decade, and beyond that, she's the daughter
of another famous face in way-out-West television history.
Jennifer's father is the late Michael Landon, the star of two of television's most famous
portrayals of the Old West: Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie. Michael Landon sadly
passed away in 1991, the same year that an eight-year-old Jennifer Landon appeared in
her first credited acting gig, a small part in the television movie Us, written, directed,
and starring her father. After Us, Jennifer took more than a decade off from acting before
popping back up in the 2004 film L.A. D.J..
A year after that movie debuted, Landon began her longest-running television stint to date,
starring as Gwen in the CBS soap opera As the World Turns. From 2005 to 2008, the actress
carried the character from a lower-class teenager to a successful young adult. Landon won three
Daytime Emmy awards for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series for her work.
Landon had a brief intermission between soap opera roles with a one-off spot on a 2011
episode of House, then began playing Heather Stevens on The Young and the Restless. Landon's
time on The Young and the Restless was relatively short-lived, as she was let go after 28 episodes.
The actress didn't stay out of the soap opera game for very long, though. After appearing
in four episodes of Cinemax's action TV show Banshee, Landon began a brief run as Hillary
Nelson on Days of Our Lives, yet another famous soap.
Fans may also recognize Landon from her guest appearance on Fox's sci-fi comedy-drama The
Orville, or from the network's medical drama, The Resident, just to name a few of her many
TV credits.
Arguably Landon's highest-profile movie role to date was as Ann McDaniel in The Front Runner,
the Jason Reitman-directed political drama starring Hugh Jackman about Senator Gary Hart
falling from grace as the skeletons in his closet emerge during the 1988 U.S. presidential
election.
The last series Landon spent more than a single episode on prior to Yellowstone was Animal
Kingdom, the TNT drama based on the Australian film of the same name. Landon played Amy,
a megachurch worker who engages in a brief relationship with the son of the matriarch
of a crime family, played by Ellen Barkin.
Circling back to Yellowstone, Landon's co-stars say she's a standout in the new season. Speaking
with Entertainment Tonight, Denim Richards, who plays Colby, described Teeter as, quote,
"this entirely new character that I don't believe anybody's ever seen before." Series
mainstay Kelly Reilly, the actress behind Beth Dutton, also heaped praise upon Landon,
saying that she scored "the role of the season."
"What's your name?"
"Teeter."
"What's that?"
"TEE-TER!"
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