Why Teeter From Yellowstone Looks So Familiar
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. While this season will no doubt provide more of the same spectacle around ownership of the ranch lands, encroaching development threats, and the people of the neighboring reservation, Teeter injects a new dynamic into life on the ranch – being the only woman working as a ranch hand after Avery's (Tanaya Beatty) departure on season 2.
In a meet-the-character clip published to Paramount Network's YouTube page, Jennifer Landon, who plays the branded ranch hand Teeter, said she felt like a natural fit for the series. "There was a line 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,'" she shared. Teeter clearly doesn't lack for roughness — fitting right in with the other hands immediately, and brandishing a near-incomprehensible drawl. Landon said of Teeter's signature style of speaking, "It's phonetically written [in the script]. She 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 Landon spent many years on As the World Turns
It's hardly a surprise that a young Jennifer Landon was interested in getting into the acting biz, as her father is the late Michael Landon, the star of two of television's most famous portrayals of the Old West: Bonanza (on which he played Little Joe Cartwright) and Little House on the Prairie (on which he played "Pa" Charles Ingalls). Michael Landon sadly passed away in 1991, the same year that Jennifer Landon appeared in her first credited acting gig: as Jennifer Kramer in the television movie Us, written and directed by her father. After Us, Landon took some time away 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 Norbeck Munson on 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. Portraying Gwen through everything from an unplanned pregnancy to a wedding (to Jesse Lee Soffer's Will Munson) to a murder plot earned Landon three Daytime Emmy awards for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series. Landon also played another role on As the World Turns: a Gwen lookalike named Cleo Babbitt.
Though she left the series in 2008, Landon circled back to As the World Turns in 2010 to appear on the last two episodes. In total, she appeared on a staggering 502 episodes of the soap that started all the way back in 1956.
Jennifer Landon stuck with soap operas after leaving As the World Turns
Following her departure from As the World Turns, Landon's world continued turning — and stayed within the soap opera universe.
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. Like As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless began many moons ago, in 1973. As such, it's not shocking to hear that the birth of Landon's character Heather was actually shown on screen. Born in 1979, Heather Stevens is the daughter of April Stevens (Cindy Eilbacher) and Paul Williams (Doug Davidson), and was seen on television as a young child, a teenager played by Conci Nelson, and then as an adult by three different actresses: Vail Bloom, Eden Riegel, and finally Jennifer Landon. Sadly, 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 playing Lilith Bode for four episodes of the action TV show Banshee, Landon began a brief run as Hillary Nelson on Days of Our Lives, yet another famous soap.
Jennifer Landon entered the Animal Kingdom, plus a few other shows and movies, before Yellowstone
Before debuting as Teeter on Yellowstone season 3, Landon spent some time on other series, in a few made-for-TV movies, and in a big-screen feature.
Fans may recognize Landon as Janelle Nicholson from Chicago Med, Jane Doe from The Resident, Detective Rachel Spokes from the small-screen flick Run for Your Life, Ukania from The Orville, Ali from Ride or Die, or Mel Carver from Within These Walls. Arguably Landon's highest-profile movie role to date was as Ann McDaniel in The Front Runner, the Jason Reitman-directed political drama about Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) falling from grace as the skeletons in his closet emerge during the 1988 U.S. presidential election, for which he was the Democratic nominee.
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, which follows Joshua "J" Cody's (Finn Cole) changing life as he moves in with his estranged relatives ... who make up a crime family led by his grandmother Janine "Smurf" Cody (Ellen Barkin). For 11 episodes of the show, Landon played Amy, a megachurch worker who engages in a brief relationship with Smurf's eldest son Andrew "Pope" Cody (Shawn Hatosy).
While her latest role has a lot to live up to, especially when compared to a 500-plus-episode run, Landon's co-stars say that Teeter packs a punch. Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, Denim Richards, who portrays Colby on Yellowstone, described Teeter as "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."