Wes Bentley may have made it look easy onscreen, but playing Jamie Dutton took its toll.
In an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Bentley, 46, dished on the perks and pitfalls of stepping into the shoes of the complicated Yellowstone character. “It was really satisfying to play [someone with] no spine, weakness and emptiness,” he told Us while promoting part two of the series’ fifth season. “It’s been a great challenge and one that I was really happy to try and meet — and I hope I did meet — but all that said, it is a weight that will be nice to let go of one day.”
After growing accustomed to schedules required for short projects (“I’d go in, fully give it [my all] between ‘action’ and ‘cut’, and go home and [be] Wes and Dad, and cook and clean,” he explained) immersing himself in the role for an extended period proved to be difficult.
“It infiltrated my life [for] over seven years and the depths of which I went with Jamie — and the amount of stuff that he has piled up in that baggage — it weighed heavy,” Bentley admitted.
“With this kind of character and for this long, it was harder and harder to let it go, even to the point where I didn’t even realize I wasn’t letting it go,” the American Horror Story alum continued. “There were aspects of Jamie now embedded in my behaviors. My kids saw it, my wife saw it [and] it was hard for them.”
“We all had to talk together, ‘like, okay, I think this is the show, guys,’ and this and that,” the dad of two — who shares son Charles and daughter Brooklyn with wife Jacqui Swedberg — shared. “It really did have a deep impact in my personal life, and that’s been challenging.”
Though the Montana State Attorney General has been through everything from killing two people to going to war with his family, Bentley admits the most difficult scene to bring to life was in season 3, when Jamie learned John Dutton (Kevin Costner) was not his biological father.
“It’s not like the other scenes, where it’s all emotional and yelling and screaming. It’s just real simple, like [a] gut punch and also an answer to a question he’s always had but didn’t know he had,” he told Us. “That day playing [Jamie] felt really ethereal — I was really in a head-y, glossy state, just trying to fathom what that must be [like].”
“It really switched something to me as well, going forward,” Bentley added.
Costner’s departure from the show leaves Jamie navigating uncharted territory in the highly anticipated return of Yellowstone. “Kevin’s amazing and you’re never going to fill those shoes, nor do I want to,” Bentley told Us. “The impact I felt was more of [the] character. What drives Jamie is so involved with John — I don’t think he knows who he is without him.”
As for what else fans can expect when the fifth and final season wraps up, Bentley is staying tight-lipped, but he admits he’s “really satisfied” with where his storyline goes.
Still, bidding farewell to Yellowstone wasn’t easy — “It was weird because I was saying bye like we have at every other season, but at the same time, it’s hard to know whenever something’s actually done, so I was suspicious about whether or not this was the last day” — but he made sure to leave every trace of Jamie behind by opting not to take any souvenirs from set.
“I should have taken one of those great suits,” he later told Us at the series’ premiere at the Museum of Modern Art on Thursday, November 7. “But the thing about Jamie is he filled my life with such bad energy and vibes — I don’t know if I want to bring it home in a material thing and let it sit there, so I’m going to let him go completely.”
The final season of Yellowstone premieres on Paramount Network Sunday, November 10, at 8 p.m. ET.
