Taylor Sheridan didn't have to look far when he was casting the lead of Landman. As it turns out, he already had the perfect character in mind—and it was Willie Soke, Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Bad Santa.
Speaking on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Sheridan revealed that Billy Bob Thornton's unforgettable performance in the 2003 black comedy was the blueprint for Tommy Norris, the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed fixer at the center of Landman. "I said, 'I want to make a drama with Bad Santa running an oil company,'" Sheridan recalled of pitching the series to Thornton.
According to the writer, Thornton didn't need much convincing. "He's like, 'That's the greatest f*cking thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, let's do it!'"
It's one of the clearest explanations yet for why Tommy Norris feels so familiar. Like Willie Soke, Tommy is sarcastic, abrasive, perpetually exhausted, and armed with a cutting one-liner for almost every situation. The difference is that instead of robbing department stores dressed as Santa Claus, Tommy is trying to hold together an oil empire while navigating cartel violence, family chaos, and corporate politics in West Texas.
Sheridan has previously said the role was built specifically around Thornton's voice. "Taylor said, 'I'm writing this show around you about the oil business, and I'm going to write in your voice,'" he said. "It sounds like a joke, but it's tailor-made for me."
The connection also helps explain why Thornton has repeatedly described playing Tommy as feeling almost effortless. Earlier this year, he likened slipping back into the character to "putting on a nice pair of worn-in pants."
"Because in real life, you don't know what's gonna happen next," Thornton recently said of Sheridan's habit of delivering scripts throughout production instead of all at once.
Sheridan also shed new light on how Landman came together in the first place. He explained that the series wasn't born solely of the Boomtown podcast, which ultimately became the show's foundation. The spark came after he called a longtime friend who worked in the oil fields following reports of a shooting in Odessa, Texas.
"I just called him... making sure you're good," Sheridan recalled. Instead of sounding alarmed, his friend laughed and told him violence in "The Patch" wasn't unusual. "He started telling me stories," Sheridan said. "That's when I got the idea for Landman."
Those firsthand accounts eventually led Sheridan to acquire the rights to Boomtown and bring podcast creator Christian Wallace aboard as co-creator. Sheridan said Wallace's job wasn't to write scripts but to help preserve the authenticity of the oil-field world.
"I didn't need him to," Sheridan explained. "I just needed someone to help me manage the authenticity and make sure that we tell the story."
