While Kayla Wallace’s Landman character Rebecca has been an extremely business-focused woman throughout much of the series, things have taken a more romantic turn for her in Season 2 after she meets Charlie, played by Guy Burnet. When their turbulent plane ride and subsequent alcohol-fueled hookup may have seemed like a one-night stand, as we found out in this week’s episode (on Paramount+), the romance continues.
As Rebecca works to ensure that everything with the offshore oil rig goes as planned, she wants to meet the M-Tex geologist, who happens to be Charlie. After she asks him to lead the drill on an offshore rig, it becomes clear they’ll be spending a lot more time together, both at work and outside of work.
‘When there’s something that’s meant to happen, there’s no running away from it’
Reflecting back on our initial introduction to Charlie on the plane, Burnet stressed that it was a “natural and funny, smart and original way to put two people together.”
“As fierce as she is in the character, as Rebecca, [Kayla Wallace] couldn’t be a sweeter, nicer, gentler human being that was very welcoming and very easy to get on with,” Burnet told Yahoo. “I came in with my ideas, but I didn’t want to step on any toes. But I immediately understood that she was incredibly game to not just turn up, and to have this different strand to her story. Because that’s really what it is, it’s her world that I’m entering here. It was, ‘Let’s bring something more to it.’ Let’s take what’s there, which is really great, and let’s try and bring our own thing as well, and … maybe make something special. … I’m super, super lucky to have been partnered with her in that.”
But while their plane scene was quite an impactful, hysterical and outrageous way to introduce Charlie, Burnet shared that there are even wilder outtakes.
“With me, you’ve got to hold me back. That’s the reality,” he said. “Because if you let go of the leash in any way, I’m just going to go, and it may be too much. I think there are outtakes in there where I’m wild. I’m in sunglasses and jumping around the plane, being completely ridiculous. I think what you saw … was kind of a sprinkling of me and Kayla, the chemistry that was there.”
Burnet also highlighted that much of what we saw in Season 2, Episode 4, titled “Dancing Rainbows,” was on the page, but he did have a conversation with Taylor Sheridan before filming the plane scene.
“I had a conversation with Taylor the night before we shot that scene, and he was adamant, he was like, ‘Listen, man, you don’t expect to get with her in any way.’ And then he threw out a few other bits and bobs about Charlie as a human being, the way he saw him. And it wasn’t entirely different, necessarily, to the way I was reading it, but it did add something,” Burnet said.
“She’s this beautiful, strong, powerful woman who wouldn’t get [with him]. That was kind of where my mind was at, and then the booze and the turbulent situation, quite literally, allowed there to be kind of a natural opening for a connection, rather than a forced element of it. And then just kind of letting the natural chemistry between us decide.”
In terms of what Burnet can tease about the future for Charlie and Rebecca, he said, “When there’s something that’s meant to happen, there’s no running away from it, and there’s no escaping it.”
