A Landman Season 2 Scene Was Much More Painful For Ali Larter Than Anyone Realized

Angela Norris, played by Ali Larter, is one of the strongest female characters in Taylor Sheridan's "Landman." She's the ex-wife to petroleum giant Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), and when she isn't helping her daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), she's helping entertain the local senior citizens. Though most of her scenes aren't painful to shoot on the Texas-filmed Paramount+ show, one sequence in Season 2 caused the actress to be attacked by fire ants, which covered her feet in bites. 

While trying to film a scene at sunset, Larter ended up standing on top of the insects, and while the bites were painful, it added emotion to her performance in the moment. "I'm standing there in this wide open field, barefoot, jean shorts," Larter said on "Late Night with Seth Meyers." "And I'm standing there, and I'm looking at the horses, and all of a sudden I feel something crawling between my toes. And I look down and there are fire ants biting my toes." Because they needed to get the shot, the actress continued on, not wanting to interrupt filming, though her reaction to the ants bled into the scene. "I'm crying because I was getting bit by fire ants," she admitted.

While there are things wrong with Season 2 of "Landman," it's generally considered an improvement over Season 1. With a 78% score on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews for Season 1 highlighted issues with the writing and portrayal of female characters. NPR's Eric Deggans wrote that "the female characters are mostly empty caricatures," and asked Taylor Sheridan to develop some "who exist outside the male gaze." This sentiment was echoed in other reviews, with Slate's Rebecca Onion noting that Sheridan "sticks some of the worst women in the world" in the series, referring to the shallow Angela and Ainsley, who are considered the worst of the 12 main characters on "Landman."

Season 2's Rotten Tomatoes score is marginally better at 83%, with many reviews highlighting a shift in the treatment of female characters, notably for Demi Moore's Cami Miller. "Moore's larger role definitely comes as a welcome change from the show's first season," Grant Hermanns opined for ScreenRant. While there are still concerns over the characterizations of Angela and Ainsley, Fangirlish noted that the new trajectory for Cami showed that "Landman" was "absolutely capable of writing complex female characters."