Sam Elliott Drops Bombshell Tally of Health Issues He Suffered While Working on Taylor Sheridan’s 1883
The Landman actor opened up about his experience on the Yellowstone spin-off, and what made him return to the Sheridanverse for another series. The A Star is Born actor, 81, has returned to the Sheridanverse for the second go for the second season of Landman, four years after he first starred in the Yellowstone prequel 1883, led by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
Now, he is giving insight into what made him come back, despite the range of health issues he had to deal with between filming the two shows.
© Getty ImagesSpeaking with Deadline alongside his Landman co-star Billy Bob Thornton, Sam first gushed: “1883 was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been handed. Know what I mean? Taylor’s a gifted man. He’s got a lot of really talented people around him.”
Then, giving insight into his initial hesitation over coming back to another Western-esque show, and the fact that he hadn’t worked since 1883, save for voicing a few episodes of Family Guy, Sam explained: “I didn’t work, after 1883. I hadn’t done anything. Is that by choice? Yeah, sure. I mean, I got offers to do stuff, and they’re not always great offers. They’re easy to turn down.”
“But I got offered stuff that my agents would like to have seen me do,” he went on, before revealing: “I had a number of physical things I was dealing with, some of them directly because of my experience on 1883, and some I had before that reared back up on me after shooting. That show beat the [expletive] out of me,” he confessed, and further shared: “I had a fall. I’ve got two torn tendons in my hip that are aren’t going to heal up.”
© FilmMagicMoreover, he said: “I can’t hear anything anymore, because of all the [expletive] gunfire. We were using these full loads, all the way through the show. I’ve been around that [expletive] all my life.”
So, as for what made him come back, he said: “Billy Bob, and another chance. I talked to Taylor, and he asked me what I’ve been doing. I said, nothing, man. I just, nothing being home and enjoying it, being with my family, being with my girls and having a good time. And dealing with all this other [physical] stuff. And he said, well, I’m going to put your ass back to work.”
Sam has been married to The Graduate actress Katharine Ross since 1984, and the couple share a daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott, born three months after their wedding.
© WireImage“I said, great,” he added of when Taylor called him up. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. And then he finally reached out to my agent and they started working on this deal, but I still haven’t seen any material. I’m one of those guys, I got to see it. I got to see something. I kept asking Taylor about it, even knowing that he’s turned out great material. He finally sent me the first couple of episodes. There were the two scenes you watched, me sitting there looking at the sun, and just talking. Then it was, when do we start?”