The TV series that made Jesse Plemons want to be an actor: “I was drawn to that world”
You might know Jesse Plemons best as the all-American psychopath next door thanks to his string of roles as quietly unnerving characters. From Todd Alquist in Breaking Bad to a number of freaks in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, he’s adept at troubled roles.
A darling character actor, you’d expect him to have very serious or at least very dark inspirations, maybe a macabre Jack Nicholson character, or even an unhinged Phillip Seymour Hoffman, especially considering he’s often compared to the latter. But, once upon a time, Plemons was just a Southern child star in his tiny hometown of Mart, Texas, so his inspirations are actually much closer to his sandy roots.
As a kid, he was obsessed with the western miniseries Lonesome Dove, based on Larry McMurtry’s eponymous 1985 novel, starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as retired Texas Rangers living with a host of colourful characters, such as a bandit for a cook and a prostitute’s daughter missing a father. It might be surprising that Plemons was so influenced by a western, but then again, Duvall and Jones aren’t two actors to sniff at, and neither was Lonesome Dove.
For a shop of its era, it had a ridiculously high tune-in rate, with over 26million viewers, and this was well past the golden era for westerns. But to the young Jesse, it wasn’t about the great actors or the viewers; it was simply the world he knew.
“My dad’s side of the family, they would all rope and ride horses. I grew up riding, so I was drawn to that world,” he told The Guardian. It was probably strange enough to have a semi-cowboy lifestyle as a kid in 1990s America, so to see the world around you reflected back is inspiring enough in establishing belonging.
Then there was the fact that Plemons was already well accustomed to the set, as he noted, “I’d go with my family to be an extra in different westerns that were always filming in our area. And so it felt like I was stepping into Lonesome Dove, your imagination come to life.” It must have really been something to watch the show on the telly and then go out onto a set filled with saloons, rangers and horses.
It’s a world that he still seems to be drawn to, despite being known now for his diverse and darker turns. Only a few years ago, he returned to the Wild West alongside his now-wife Kirsten Dunst in The Power of the Dog, receiving an Academy Award nomination for his role as wealthy ranch-owner George Burbank.
This overarching factor of finding real life on reel also explains his breakthrough role in Friday Night Lights. He’d played football in school all his life, so transitioning from westerns to an on-set football field clearly made sense for him. This might be the perfect place to say that the inspirational proverb of ‘write’, or in this case, ‘act what you know’, has gotten through to Plemons, but then there’s his more recent work that I hope is not coming from something he knows.
