How Accurate Is Landman? Co-Creator Explains What's Real And What's Not

Taylor Sheridan's "Landman" found a way to make the oil business into a rugged, sexy drama, and one of the best western shows not set in the "Yellowstone" universe. The series follows Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) as he tries to make his employer's oil drilling company a success against their rivals. Although it's injected with the gritty style of Sheridan's writing, it's quite accurate to the real world of the oil industry.

When speaking to Variety about the hit Paramount+ show, co-creator and former oil roughneck, Christian Wallace, revealed that they "try to get as close to the real deal as we can. We use real drilling rigs, real roughnecks. That stuff is as authentic as we can possibly make it." For anyone tuning into "Landman" for the first time, oil roughnecks are the workers on the rigs who handle equipment, like the drills.

Wallace did point out that the team uses "shortcuts" to communicate what's happening in a scene, even if it's not completely accurate. He added: "So the oil and gas guy may be like, 'Wait, what type of gauge are you talking about right there?' But it's just a storytelling device." Before he co-created the show with Sheridan, Wallace produced the "Boomtown" podcast about the industry, so he knows exactly what he's talking about.

Real life isn't quite as exciting as all the Taylor Sheridan TV shows, so Christian Wallace said the team has to take creative liberties to make sure there aren't scenes of Billy Bob Thornton's Tommy Norris doing paperwork. He joked: "If we actually showed just what a landman did, which is basically pull files and look things up on a computer, nobody would watch that show. It'd be very, very boring."

Sheridan has a knack for balancing episodes so that they're equally packed with action and dramatic stakes, and Wallace learned where to "compromise" on the line between fact and fiction. Referring to Tommy's dealings with the Gallino Cartel in Season 1, Wallace joked: "I've never met a landman who's had a bag put over his head and got pistol-whipped."

However, Wallace did explain that the show includes "kernels of the truth" when it comes to the cartel storyline. In the first episode of "Landman" Season 1, the cartel lands a small plane on a road — and that was inspired by an incident Wallace read about in the history of the Texas Rangers. He explained, "The cartel was landing these planes on extremely rural roads out in West Texas, offloading their cargo, and the Texas Rangers ambushed them one night. So there are elements of it."