Dutton Ranch: The Yellowstone Spin-Off's New Texas Set Sounds Terrifyingly Venomous
Look, if you sign up to be part of a Taylor Sheridan TV show, the chances of you running into some rattlesnakes are pretty high. Be that as it may, Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly had to deal with a lot of the venomous reptiles while making Season 1 of "Dutton Ranch" in the Lone Star State.
"Eight months, 3,400 rattlesnakes we caught," Hauser told "The Kelly Clarkson Show" when asked about filming the neo-Western series. "Dutton Ranch" Episode 2 sees Rip Wheeler (Hauser) dump a body in a mining shaft, indicating that the Texas-set "Yellowstone" spin-off has its own train station.
That's great for television drama, but the location used to film these scenes had a serpent problem, according to Wheeler. "That particular location we were at, we actually were gonna go film there at night and got turned away," Hauser said. He added, "Christina [Voros, executive producer and director] found, I don't know, 40 or 50 rattlesnakes." With that in mind, how did they deal with them?
The Dutton Ranch cast was protected from rattlesnakes
The creators of the "Yellowstone" franchise always come prepared to deal with snakes. Experts are brought in to make sure they don't pose a threat to the cast and crew, allowing the shoots to go ahead without anyone getting bitten. But even with pros on board, Kelly Reilly was still worried about encountering rattlesnakes while filming her "Dutton Ranch" scenes.
"We have snake wranglers, like, literally six of them on set at any point, and I'm in these stiletto heels running through fields," Reilly recalled. "And I'm just praying, 'Please let them have got all the snakes in this vicinity.' They just pick them up and put them somewhere far away from us."
Of course, this isn't the first time the "Yellowstone" saga has forced Reilly to deal with harmful animals. Rattlesnakes and other creatures of the wild regularly appear in this franchise, often requiring the actors to share the screen with them. If history is anything to go by, it's only a matter of time until rattlesnakes, wolves, and bears cause havoc for the characters on "Dutton Ranch."