How Taylor Sheridan Used Bad Santa To Convince Billy Bob Thornton To Star In Landman

At first glance, you might not see the connection between a Christmas-themed black comedy and a gritty drama about an oil man... but "Landman" creator Taylor Sheridan is a unique thinker. Right from the start, he had his sights set on Billy Bob Thornton to play the lead, Tommy Norris, in his Paramount+ drama. When it came time to convince the Oscar winner, Sheridan only needed to bring up the 2003 holiday classic "Bad Santa."

Sheridan explained how he convinced Thornton to join the show in an interview on The Bill Simmons Podcast. "I said 'I wanna make a drama with Bad Santa running an oil company.' [...] And he was like, 'That's the greatest f***ing thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, let's do it.'" Apparently, Sheridan knows how to cast a grizzled landman with shady ties to local drug cartels. Thornton's "Landman" performance has received multiple best actor nominations, including one at the Golden Globes in 2025 and another at the Critics' Choice Television Awards in 2026. Season 3 of "Landman" began production in fall of 2026 with Thornton continuing his lead role.

On The Bill Simmons Podcast, the host asked what inspires Taylor Sheridan's television shows. Sheridan said that "it's always a lightning bolt." With "Landman," the spark of an idea came from a conversation with a friend. He called his buddy when he heard that a gunman was causing chaos in his area, and the friend just laughed.

Sheridan explained, "I said, 'Well, there's some lunatic running around Odessa shooting people. And it's all over the news and he just starts laughing. And he says, 'That happens here every day.' ... He started telling me stories. And that's when I got the idea for 'Landman.'" It's wild that an alleged real-life lunatic inspired Sheridan to make a show about a pretend lunatic in the mold of Thornton's "Bad Santa" character.