‘Landman’ Star Ali Larter Unpacks Emotional Finale & Reveals Favorite Season 2 Moments (VIDEO)

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Landman Season 2 Episode 10, “Tragedy and Flies.”]

Goodbye, M-Tex, hello CTT Oil Exploration and Cattle.

Landman‘s Season 2 finale saw Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) scrambling on two fronts — to figure out what would be next after being axed from his job by Cami (Demi Moore) and prevent a criminal prosecution of Cooper (Jacob Lofland) for murder. Things ended on a relatively hopeful note, though, as Rebecca (Kayla Wallace) worked her legal eagle magic with the police, and Tommy secured the financing to take Cooper’s leases to the next level under his own family shingle.

Now, he’ll be indebted to the nebulous Gallino (Andy Garcia), number two to Cooper, and bringing T.L. (Sam Elliott), Dale (James Jordan), Nate (Colm Feore), Ariana (Paulina Chávez), and even Cheyenne (Francesca Xuereb) along for the ride with his gamble.

While Angela (Ali Larter) says she trusts him to lead a new charge, her face could be telling a different story.

After a season full of going all-in with her life in Tommy’s “frat house,” Angela had to drop her very beloved daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) off at college, and it seemed to take a major emotional toll on her.

To break down the character’s state of mind and reflect on the buzziest moments of Season 2, TV Insider caught up with Ali Larter!

This was a really fun season for Angela, especially since we got to see her work a lot of magic in different ways. So looking back, what was your favorite scene to film this season?

Ali Larter: You know, favorite’s a tough thing because I love to be challenged as an actor, and so I think that some of the hardest scenes are my favorite scenes… In Episode 4, the funeral scene, when we all go to the funeral together, and you see us together as a family, is really important. I feel like the scene where I drop Ainsley off to college, and you understand the depth of the pain that Angela’s feeling, which Taylor cuts it with humor, with the Neiman Marcus line, but that was painful to shoot. It was a really tough day for me, but I felt like you need to see that because that’s the level that this woman feels. And then I would say the last scene of the finale is one of my favorites, because it’s a really quiet scene with Billy, where it’s like he’s starting to kind of get the truth of life that cancer could be right around the corner. We don’t have any guarantees for tomorrow, and then you really hear Angela say, “But it’s all around you.” She sees the world of possibility and joy in every moment of life. And so I think that it was just like a beautifully written scene.

There are a couple of other moments in the finale between them, like when she talks to Tommy about him being fired. She tells him that she trusts him. Do you think she’s being genuine about that, or does she have some fears there that she’s not expressing?

I think that you’re onto something. That scene was written the way that Angela was happy, and it took us a long time to shoot it, and it was a very … We were on a plane. It was packed with crew. The air conditioner wasn’t working. It was the end of the day, but the scene wasn’t quite working because it didn’t feel right for Angela to be happy for him. It was that unease you feel when something could go awry, and that’s what we wanted to put into the scene. So we kind of reworked it. And it was important also that he’s the stable one in the relationship, she’s the wildcat, and she remembers the days when he takes on that role, and I think there’s a bit of fear in her about what can happen when he starts rising again and rolling the dice. Yeah, totally complicated. I think it’s a little bit of just a messy scene. And that’s always what we’re trying to do, is find ways to be really authentic and original in every single scene. We’re just mining the material to take it, lift it off the page.

There’s another moment they have a pretty poignant conversation where Tommy sizes up Angela, and he’s like, “I know what you really want.” And there seems like for a second there, she’s like, “Well, do you?” And then with what he says, do you think he hit the nail on the head?

Kind of. I think that he sees her and he understands what she wants. A lot of the season was also us not wanting to just fall into this rhythm where we have this high-stakes fighting moment, and then we make up, and then he does something to provoke her, and then it leads to that. So we’re always taking what’s on the page and figuring out new ways to express their chemistry and their relationship. And I do think he kind of knows what she wants, but I think that the fear within that is like, “Why are you saying this to me?” It’s like that makes her nervous. So we’ll see how that all unfolds in the third season…. But yeah, I was really happy with finale because I don’t get a lot of quiet moments, and I was able to kind of find them in this episode.

Emerson Miller / Paramount+

There’s a plot line in the finale where he doesn’t tell Angela at first about the firing, but he also doubles down on the mistake by not telling her about Cooper. Do you think he made the right choice, though?

I do. I do. I think if there’s an amount that she can handle, and with her children, she’s such a fierce mama bear, that I just think there’s no filter. And I could easily have seen Angela storming into that police station and freaking out. I mean, I remember the scene where I saw him in the hospital, where he was beaten up the first year. I mean, there’s no slow roll into her getting upset. It’s just like a fierce [reaction]. All of a sudden, she’s there. And I think that Kayla did an amazing job of going in there, and I kind of got the chills when you see Ariana make a call to her, and then she’s coming in as this kind of hero to help him and to help them with the situation. So I think that was fine. I think that worked out.

Yeah, speaking of running into rooms, I honestly expected her to run in and go confront Cami. Do you? Did you feel like maybe that was an impulse that you would have seen her play out to?

Possibly. I mean, she knows Cami, and I think that with all the stuff that happened in the finale… There’s so much prospecting that’s going on, with Ainsley leaving, and she’s making this new friend and figuring out what her life is going to look like. And if she stays in Fort Worth, and he loses his job, and what does that mean, really mean, for their life? … Again, [that’s] why I didn’t want to be excited on the plane, and when I find out the news, it’s more that she feels that they can handle anything… So that’s something that, even with the finale from the end of the first season, you know he’s saying there’s things that I can’t tell you that she wants to hear, but he kind of knows there’s things she can’t hear. So, I mean, it’s always for us by finding a way to keep it really organic, very messy and like real relationships, how people behave when they have such shared history over many, many years.

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The final moments set into motion a new company that Tommy is going to be running with Cooper and T.L. Even Ariana and Cheyenne are getting into it. We saw Angela gamble and win before. Do you think you want to see her kind of get into that wildcatting as the series goes on? 

I mean, Michelle and I went to the set that night because we were like, “Why are we not in this scene?” We were disappointed. We’re like, “We want to be here!” But that’s not what it was like. I’m saying that jokingly…. I love the way it’s like, “CTT.” I just think that Taylor’s writing, he wrapped it up and got to a place where it feels very exciting, and he’s giving a space for his father and also helping his son grow into the man he should be. I thought that was a really very beautiful scene and great storyline.

As you mentioned that the series is renewed for Season 3. Where are you at with preparations for that?

I’m still so deep in this season. Our show, it’s for five months in Fort Worth, and it is a full commitment. And then we’re on press tour for three months — pretty much while the show is on the air, we are out here talking about it, which we’re excited to do because we’re really proud of our show, and the response has been so exciting and overwhelming, and we want more people that get to experience it. You know, I was at Polo [Bar] last night, taking my daughter to dinner, and I see this woman kind of walking to me from across the room. She’s got the sparkle in her eye, and I see that it’s Martha [Stewart]. And I’m like, “I’ve met her around the way.” She leaves, she walks back in, she comes up to our table, and she looks at me, and she goes, “I wait ’til every Sunday morning to watch your show. At 12:01, I am watching your show.” And then she looks at my daughter, and she goes, “Your mom is a badass.” And so what’s fun is people, I mean, everyone I love from people working the ballet to Martha Stewart, are watching this show. That’s just cool. You don’t usually get that wide of a span of an audience. So that’s pretty much my focus. And I haven’t even gotten there for Season 3. I mean, Taylor’s gonna write whatever he wants. And I think that we built these characters. We know the relationships, we know the chemistry, and wherever the story goes, I’m excited, and I trust him.

Angela gets some of the best one-liners in the show. What have been your favorites?

I think it’s Episode 9 where there’s just where the guy at the Bowie House says, “How are you doing, Angela?” And she goes, “Any better, and I’d still be me.” I think that’s hysterical because that kind of coins who she is: “Any better, and I’d still be me.” And then the other one is when we leave Neiman Marcus, where I kind of say, “I never get the blues. I’ve got my hands firmly around the scrotum of life, and I will not let go” … which is so funny.

Landman, Paramount+