‘Dutton Ranch’ Cast Shares All About That Fiery Premiere (VIDEO)

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Yellowstone‘s Beth and Rip have returned to TV, but they’re leaving Montana behind. The Dutton Ranch two-part series premiere revealed why Beth and Rip moved to Texas: a natural disaster. The Dutton Ranch cast, including Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser, dives into the early episodes in the video interview above. Warning: Dutton Ranch Season 1 Episodes 1-2 spoilers ahead!

The first two episodes of Dutton Ranch came out on Paramount+ on the morning of Friday, May 15. The episodes will also air on Paramount Network at 8/7c. One episode will come out weekly after that, first on the streaming platform and then on the TV channel. There are nine episodes total in Season 1. As of the time of publication, it hasn’t been renewed yet.

Dutton Ranch opened with a happy Beth, Rip, and son Carter (Finn Little) on their new ranch in Dillon, Montana, the place they bought in the Yellowstone series finale. They had lived peacefully in Dillon for about one year. In the opening scene, Beth and Rip took a ride to a meadow for a romantic evening together. A storm woke them up from their nap under a tree, and they watched in horror as a lightning strike set fire to the mountain range. The fire was moving fast and headed directly for their ranch, where Carter was home alone.

Beth got Carter, John Dutton’s (Kevin Costner) cowboy hat, Elsa Dutton’s (Isabel May from 1883) knife, important documents and photos, and their horses to safety while Rip tried to save their herd of cattle. He had to set them loose so they could run to safety on their own, but one little calf got left behind. Rip rode through fire to save it. Later, Beth returned to hopefully find Rip. She did, but he was covered in soot and exhausted to the bone. He did end up saving the calf. Later, they found a ranch in Rio Paloma, Texas, and the episode jumped ahead to six months after the fire.

The fire scene was filmed with primarily practical effects, director, cinematographer, and executive producer Christina Alexandra Voros tells TV Insider. Hauser did his own stunts in the scene, which, despite being set in Montana, was filmed predominantly in Texas. “Some of it was filmed in Montana up until the fire,” Voros says above.

Emerson Miller / Paramount+

“We did a tremendous amount of the fire work practically. The whole sequence with the small calf, most of that was practical fire on location,” she explains. “We have an incredible visual effects team that helped augment that in post, and we had an incredible special effects, stunts, and animals team on the ground with us to navigate, keeping everybody safe while we were working with live fire on those nights. The goal was to make it feel as spectacular and heartbreaking as possible, and so the scope of the devastation was really important in the story.”

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Voros’ husband, Jason Owen, works on Dutton Ranch as a horse trainer, Hauser shares. The couple helped a lot in this scene.

“They basically looked at me and said, ‘How comfortable are you with this?’ And I said, ‘I’m comfortable as long as that horse is comfortable,'” Hauser tells us. “They let me loose, literally. We walked through it several times, cutting the fence, running the cows out, jumping back on the horse, riding up these ridges [and] down. It became this obstacle course of fire and smoke, and I just got after it. It was exciting to do. You see in the show how dangerous it is at times, but it was exactly what I wanted, and Christina filmed it beautifully.”

Learn more about Dutton Ranch from Hauser, Reilly, Little, Natalie Alyn Lind, and more in the full video interview above. And stay tuned for more videos with the cast throughout Season 1.

Dutton Ranch, Fridays, 8/7c, Paramount Network, Streaming Fridays on Paramount+

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