Their brutal and bloody series finale showdown marked the end of a decades-long sibling rivalry, and while it sadly didn’t last the entire episode or involve any chainsaws, it was perfect all the same.
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To be expected, I nerded out appropriately when speaking to Yellowstone‘s stunt coordinator Jason Rodriguez about bringing that scene to life, as well as his many years on Taylor Sheridan-created projects, including prequels 1883 and 1923. An industry veteran out of Texas whose work will be seen in other upcoming Yellowstone-verse series, Rodriguez surprised me with some of the details he shared, so let’s dive in.
Beth And Jamie’s Brutal Brawl Took Less Than Two Days To Film
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If I had to wager money on it, I’m not exactly sure how long I’d think filming Beth and Jamie’s finale bout would have taken, but I know I would have overshot the actual timeline of things. When I asked the stunt head about bringing it together, he immediately blew my mind, saying:
We shot it for about a day and a half, and it was a lot, because Taylor wanted to add a lot of blood and stuff as we went along. So there were breaks where we had to add layers to it.
The “stuff” going along with the blood would be the pepper spray and milk that Jamie pours all over his face. I can’t say I’ve ever filmed a fight with milk drying in my hair, but Wes gets that badge of honor.
Yellowstone seemingly worked that scene and other choreographed fights more akin to stage plays, where a lot of the details were worked out in the rehearsal process. Rodriguez continued:
But they rehearsed, so that it was easier to shoot that in a day and a half. Usually on a feature or something, you take at least a couple days to shoot that, but we were able to rehearse it so well, and they knew it so well that it allowed us to shoot it pretty fast and move right through it. But it was pretty intense.
Just in case anyone thinks Wes Bentley might have balked at having Jamie go through getting his ass whooped up on before flat-out dying, Rodriguez shared:
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That fight had obviously been building up for five seasons, and it came to that climax, and it turned out really good. Jamie, Wes, is always into it, and always willing to go above and beyond and give it everything he’s got.
Unfortunately for the black sheep of the Dutton family, he literally gave everything he had in that fight, and won’t be around to pop up in Beth and Rip’s upcoming spinoff, at least outside of possible flashbacks.
(Image credit: YouTube TV)
Wes Bentley And Kelly Reilly Filmed Nearly Everything That Fans Watched
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I always get taken out of a movie or TV show when it’s entirely too obvious that a featured actor has been replaced by a stunt actor. (I get why it has to happen sometimes, but knowing doesn’t help.) That isn’t ever really the case on Yellowstone, and definitely not in Beth and Jamie’s fight, as it looks like Kelly Reilly and Wes Bentley are both on screen the entire time.
It turns out that’s mostly right, as Jason Rodriguez explained how Taylor Sheridan doesn’t go the traditional route when filming certain stunt sequences. As he put it:
In that particular fight, the stunt doubles didn’t do many things. There was a couple moments where, [Wes and Kelly] can’t do the stuff that could obviously hurt them very bad. So there were a lot of pauses, we did a lot of stop-and-go’s. Taylor likes to do it where we just freeze at a moment.
Safety is obviously key in any scene, but the actors are at the point where they can take it right to the edge before having to step aside. Rodriguez gave an example:
There’s a part in it, for example, where Beth tries to kick Jamie in the face, and he catches her leg and they he lifts her up and slams her on her back.
Well, Kelly did the kick, Wes caught the leg, and then Taylor would say, ‘Pause,’ and then we put the stunt double in.
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Then they go, ‘Alright, and go,’ and Wes would flip her back, and she’d just slam on the ground really hard. So we only used the stunt doubles in that case, just for anything that was a harder hit than we wanted to put our actors through.
It’s quite a smooth way to handle things, since it cuts out any opportunities for bizarrely wigged or too-tall stunt performers to to stand out in an immersion-breaking way.
As he explained:
We didn’t try to go through a whole take with the stunt people. We just inserted the stunt people where we needed them. [The actors] did the lion’s share of the action.
The stunt coordinator also talked about Cole Hauser, whom Rodriguez has worked with with, arriving as Rip to save Beth from being strangled by her brother. That interaction provided another quick swap-and-go situation.
Like when Rip comes in and grabs Jamie and throws him against the wall and smashed him through the table, we did the same kind of thing.
We pause, put the double in, smash him through the table. I put Wes back in there, get him back up. It’s just kind of, ‘Insert stunt person. Okay, smash. Okay, insert actor.’ It’s a cool way to shoot it.
For all that I understand why filming it in more traditional ways makes sense, I can’t exactly knock this method with a tire iron.
I can’t wait to see everything else on the way from Jason Rodriguez in the world of Yellowstone, and since there isn’t a Dutton relative out there who can avoid getting into a slam-bang of a fight, I’m sure he’ll be quite busy indeed.
Yellowstone Seasons 1-5 can be streamed with a Peacock subscription, while a Paramount+ subscription is the ticket to the rest of Taylor Sheridan’s scripted series..
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