Landman's Ali Larter Remembers The Tough Audition Process Taylor Sheridan Put Her Through

"Landman" was the easiest audition of Jon Hamm's career. Taylor Sheridan invited the actor to his ranch in Fort Worth, explained his ideas for the show, and offered him the part right there and then. However, not every cast member had such an easy time of it, as Ali Larter, who plays Angela Norris on the oil-worker drama, described her audition as one of the toughest of her career.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the "Varsity Blues" star recalled having to read four pages of the script during the initial stages, followed by 10, and so on. After that, she was summoned to Fort Worth for a screen test — along with 11 other actors who were in the running to play Angela. That's when things got really tough. In her own words:

"You get called in one by one, and then you have to wait until everyone's done. It is no joke! When I say the mental game is so much of our business, you have to be able to perform, and I think that Taylor puts people under this kind of pressure to see if you can deliver when you're working on his sets, because his sets have moments like that. As much as it sounds cruel, I can actually look back on it now as a way of editing out who can handle and withstand the heat."

The Angela character has received some backlash from "Landman" fans, with the naysayers claiming that she's shallow and unrealistic. However, maybe they will give her a second chance now that Larter has revealed the obstacles to overcome to get the part. The opinion of a few haters shouldn't matter, though, as Larter enjoys playing the character, and she believes that Angela has more depth than her critics would have you believe.

One benefit of Ali Larter jumping through hoops to be part of a Taylor Sheridan series is that she fully understands her character. After reading through 18 pages just to get a screen test, the actor began to see Angela as a complex character, and she fell in love with the fact she's a middle-aged woman who is full of life and embraces her sexuality. In the show, Angela is portrayed as a loud, proud, carefree lady, but she's capable of being serious when it matters.

Since then, Larter has tried to make Angela the best version of herself that she can be. In fact, she and Billy Bob Thornton did a lot of prep to ensure that the up-and-down nature of Angela and Tommy Norris' relationship was sold with conviction. As she put it:

"All of us in the first season put in a tremendous amount of time and energy to build this house that we live in. There was a lot of the fighting and vitriol between the two, and Billy and I wanted moments of that, but we really worked to find our connection as humans that we could then bring into our work."

With "Landman" season 2 officially on the way, Larter will have more opportunities to explore Angela's charms, flaws, and nuances. Now it's up to Sheridan and co-creator Christian Wallace to write the character in a way that makes the naysayers warm to her.