[This story contains major spoilers from Dutton Ranch’s season one finale, “El Padrino.”]
Dutton Ranch star Natalie Alyn Lind gossiped with her castmates about what the season one finale of the Yellowstone sequel series held in store for her character of Oreana Lynn Jackson. But nothing could’ve prepared her for the one-two punch that came her way.
For starters, the heiress to 10 Petal Ranch learned that she’s pregnant, and while all signs point to Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) and Beth Dutton’s (Kelly Reilly) adopted son, Carter Green (Finn Little), being the father, it’s not necessarily an open-and-shut case. After all, the naive 19-year-old met Oreana after he jumped her 30-something steer wrestler boyfriend, Hoyt (Kyle Dondlinger), for getting too physical with her during a heated argument. Oreana and Carter immediately began their own relationship after she finally kicked Hoyt to the curb.
“Oreana is a very unpredictable girl. So, in my heart, I believe that it’s Carter’s, but that’s not a question that I have a definitive answer to,” Lind tells The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s a lot of genius masterminds working on that right now for season two, and I have not been told one way or another.”
It’s established early on in EP Taylor Sheridan’s fifth Yellowstone spinoff that Oreana does not want to follow in the footsteps of her grandmother, Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening). The latter became a young mother before eventually taking over her family’s Rio Paloma, Texas ranch from her father.
Consequently, Oreana convinces Carter to run away with her without telling him the reason behind the impulsive decision. Upon her return home to pack for their getaway, she encounters her volatile father, Rob-Will (Jai Courtney), who’s being unusually sentimental considering he’s been the show’s antagonist thus far.
Oreana senses something is off, and sure enough, she hears a gunshot less than 30 seconds after he departed her bedroom. She proceeds to find her father’s dead body near the front door before clocking that her adoptive uncle, Joaquin/Kino (Juan Pablo Raba), is speeding away from the scene. The two brothers had been dueling all season long for future control of 10 Petal.
“I was definitely shocked once I read the finale. I had heard that my character may or may not be pregnant. I wasn’t expecting the death [of Rob-Will] and Oreana’s pregnancy to both happen,” Lind says.
Lind had to do a lot of wailing upon discovering Rob-Will’s lifeless body, but the waterworks weren’t limited to just her coverage. When Bening, as Rob-Will’s mother, arrived late on the scene, Lind couldn’t keep it together off camera. “We were shooting the reverse of Annette, and even though the camera wasn’t on me, I couldn’t stop crying off screen because of the vulnerability that she brought to that scene,” Lind shares.
Season two of Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch has already been greenlit, but many questions linger: Who’s the father of Oreana’s baby? Will she now embrace her birthright after the murder of her father? Where is her unmentioned mother? Lind and the rest of the Jackson family actors received a great deal of backstory prior to filming the show, but it remains to be seen if that’ll stick now that there’s a new showrunner, Benjamin Cavell, in the fold. “I know the mother’s backstory, but nobody else does yet,” Lind admits. “I hope it’s brought into season two, but I’m going to leave it there for now.”
Lind is also a self-proclaimed “horror addict,” and every Halloween, she goes above and beyond to establish her bona fides. She recently took it a step further by self-producing her own horror movie called Halloween Store. She leads the ensemble cast, as a masked killer begins targeting the staff of Spirit Halloween’s lesser known competitor, Shriek Shack. The film is on the verge of finishing its sound mix for release later this year. For Lind, the endeavor was less about being a scream queen and more about shepherding a production.
“Halloween Store was really about me being on the opposite side of the camera. It’s something I’ve always had an interest in since I was little,” Lind says.
Below, during a conversation with THR, Lind — who’s the older sister to Emily and Alyvia Alyn Lind — dives into Dutton Ranch finale and what comes next, as she also discusses the well-adjusted dynamic of her showbiz family.
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How familiar were you with the Yellowstone universe going into Dutton Ranch auditions for Oreana Jackson?
I’ve been watching Yellowstone since the beginning. I was such a huge fan of the franchise and the characters in this brilliantly created universe. So in getting my first meeting for Dutton Ranch, I wasn’t just excited because there was the potential of me being on the show; I was just as thrilled to know that, as a fan, Beth [Kelly Reilly] and Rip [Cole Hauser] were coming back. So it didn’t feel like I was actually a part of it until I was on a horse at Cowboy Camp in Texas. It’s bizarre when you’ve been watching something for so long, and then, all of a sudden, you’re a part of it. I still can’t put it into words how crazy and how grateful I am for that.
Did the casting process start with sending a self-tape off into the ether?
Yeah, I sent a tape to John Papsidera, who’s probably my favorite casting director of all time. For a show like this, they don’t give you a ton of context for who the character is. My first audition scene was the introduction scene where Oreana gets out of her boyfriend’s truck, and she starts off just guns blazing. After I’d booked the show, I wasn’t even sure if that was her opening scene because I hadn’t received a script yet. Perhaps we’d see whatever brought her to that point of anger, so I love that you don’t meet her before then. It’s just such an intense way to come into a show, and that’s her entire energy throughout the season.
Did you test in person with anyone?
Once I sent in a tape, I didn’t really hear anything until two weeks later. I got a call saying that they wanted me to come to Texas in two days. So I got on a flight to Fort Worth where 12 to 14 other girls tested with me. It was such a supportive group of girls, and we all had a fun time staying at the Stockyards together. We thought of it as a little vacation to Texas.
After we had the first day of testing, they brought us back in for a second day. I went in once, and then they pulled me aside to have me and Jai Courtney go into the room together. I was like, “Nice to meet you. I don’t really know what’s happening.” We had to stand straight and then to the side. That night, I got on a flight to go home, and by the time I landed, I heard I had booked it. They gave me two days to get my stuff together before moving to Texas for six months. It was a whirlwind.
How was it explained to you that your 24-year-old character would be dating a 19-year-old high school kid (Finn Little’s Carter)?
It’s a very interesting dynamic because Oreana is a character who has been given everything to her on a silver platter. She’s been told who she is and what her path is going to be. And she’s now at a phase where she’s trying to rebel against that. Within that, she is snarky and kind of acting like a child. You then have Carter, who’s had a very rough upbringing having lost his parents, and he’s now been uprooted from Montana by [his new guardians] Beth and Rip and taken to Texas.
In episode one, you see Oreana’s boyfriend Hoyt, who looks like he’s around 30, and it shows that sometimes love doesn’t have a number if there’s a genuine connection. Carter brings this whimsical, childlike feeling that Oreana was robbed of when she was younger. So the fact that they do have this age difference is going to play a role in later seasons. They’ll be at different stages in their lives, because it is a pretty major age difference. He can’t even legally drink yet. My character has already gone to an amazing college and graduated at the top of her class. So she’s a very, very smart girl, and she’s seen a lot of life. And Carter, even though he is younger, has experienced more than some people in their 50s have.
I feel so much secondhand embarrassment watching the Carter character operate. He makes every rookie mistake possible by love-bombing this more experienced young woman. Why do you think Oreana wasn’t scared off by his emotional immaturity?
Oreana is used to being in an environment where she’s told what to do, and she’s surrounded by a lot of very unauthentic people. Even within the Jackson family, everybody is very manipulative. So it’s a breath of fresh air to see somebody that is genuinely not trying to be somebody they’re not. And when he makes mistakes, it allows her to make mistakes as well, something she hasn’t been able to do in her family.
There’s something kind of charming about Carter’s uncoordinated love-bombing. She doesn’t think of everything he says as staged or fake. She feels that it comes from a very real place, and she’s not used to that. So when he says crazy things and that he loves her after three dates, it scares her in that she doesn’t want to hurt him. But she’s also not used to somebody genuinely loving her for her.
She and Carter catch her boyfriend Hoyt being unfaithful and vandalize his truck. So it seems like she’s dated a lot of guys who’ve mostly mistreated her. It’s Psychology 101, but she’s probably been pursuing guys who are reminiscent of her father [Courtney’s Rob-Will Jackson]. Is that also why she’s giving this know-nothing kid a chance?
One-hundred percent. Oreana is drawn to toxic people, not just toxic men; that includes the toxic people surrounding her. The people you love the most can also hurt you the most. So she walks around with this overwhelming sense of wanting to be enough because it’s not something naturally given to her. She yearns for her father to step up and actually be a father. He’s tried to be more of a friend for her entire life. She’s also probably tired of cleaning up after his mistakes and not knowing if she’s going to see him the next day. Her dad has been in and out of rehab his entire life, and it definitely plays into Oreana and Beulah’s relationship. Oreana wasn’t raised by her mother. Beulah was her parental figure because Rob-Will never tells her no. So it makes for a very messy dynamic, and she puts all of that hurt into the men that she dates.
Is Taylor Sheridan like the Wizard of Oz during filming? Do you rarely see him since he’s overseeing 48 shows at the same time?
(Laughs.) That’s a perfect way to put it. I already knew Taylor for a couple years through family friends, and I’m always in awe of how much he’s able to accomplish. I don’t know what his schedule is. I don’t know how his brain works. Taylor being able to show up for one day on set is shocking to me. He’s not our showrunner on Dutton Ranch, so he wasn’t on set every day, but he is on set for multiple shows at multiple times. He really is the Wizard of Oz.
Even though some of the shows are not directly connected to Yellowstone, he’s created this family dynamic between all the actors. I know people on Lioness and The Madison. It just feels like one big happy family.
You mentioned earlier that you attended Cowboy Camp, which is a rite of passage for Sheridan-verse actors. But you didn’t really do any cowboying on the show. Did they just want you to bond with the rest of the cast?
It was probably a combination of both. At the beginning of the season, I’m not sure anyone fully knew where all of our characters were ultimately going to end up, so I think they wanted everyone to have that authentic experience and be prepared for whatever the story might require. I’m hoping I get to do some horseback riding next season because now I have the skills.
But honestly, even if they knew from the start that Oreana wasn’t going to be spending much time in the saddle, I’m so grateful they sent me to Cowboy Camp. It gave me a real appreciation for the lifestyle and the world these characters live in. It was such a special bonding experience with the cast, and some of my favorite memories from the entire season came from those weeks at camp. So I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
Getting into the season one finale, were you able to read the script without being spoiled?
Well, there were so many different concepts. Our entire cast would sit around and talk about how we would hear things. We would hear birds chirping here and there. My predictions were not correct, but other people’s were. We should have put bets down.
I was definitely shocked once I read the finale. I heard that my character may or may not be pregnant. There were so many different variations of how it was going to go. I wasn’t expecting the death [of Rob-Will] and Oreana’s pregnancy to both happen. The last episode feels like an action-packed movie. It’s such a great episode, and it was really cool to watch because I’m obviously not on set for every scene. I was so happy to see the way that the cast and [director] Christina [Alexandra Voros] brought what was on the page to life.
As far as the pregnancy revelation, she broke up with Hoyt only a short while ago, but there’s no question it’s Carter’s, right? Or is it supposed to be a big mystery?
I don’t know. Oreana is a very unpredictable girl. So, in my heart, I believe that it’s Carter’s, but that’s not a question that I have a definitive answer to. There’s a lot of genius masterminds working on that right now for season two, and I have not been told one way or another.
At the party, she stuck a dagger in Carter’s gut when she referenced her encounter with the guest who went to Texas A&M with her. But that was ancient history, not recent history?
In that moment, I think that she was referring to ancient history. I don’t believe the baby is his because of what transpires later with Beulah’s heart attack. I don’t think she had the chance to go back and have a fun time with College Guy that night. So I do believe that the last person she slept with was Carter, but that’s just my personal interpretation of it. I have no facts to back that up.
After the pregnancy news, she tracks down Carter and asks him to run away with her without telling him the real reason behind it all. Why does she choose that option now that she’s with child?
Oreana acts on instinct, and if she gets something in her mind, she’s going to fulfill it. There’s this moment of overwhelming possibilities as everything in her life is about to change.
During her argument with Beulah (Annette Bening) in the second episode, she said she didn’t want to be like her and take over the ranch. So maybe she feels that if she stays to have this child, she’s bound to have the same life Beulah had?
Beulah had Rob-Will when she was young, and Rob-Will had Oreana when he was young. This is definitely a family pattern. For the entire season, Oreana has been trying to do something different than the rest of her family. It’s this moment of, There’s so much trauma happening around us. Why are we a part of this? Why are we falling down the same path as our family members? Why are we not breaking the generational curse and trauma bond? Screw this. Genuinely, screw this. I have a genuine connection with you. Let’s just leave. Let’s separate from all of this. We don’t have to be here anymore.
Do you consider her to be more of a young Beth than a young Beulah?
Personally, I love when people make the comparison of Oreana and Beth, but she has parallels with both Beulah and Beth. Something that was very important to me from the beginning was creating Oreana’s own individual identity. The entire Taylor Sheridan universe has done so well in not shying away from women who are not afraid to speak their mind and hold dominance in a conversation and kick some ass.
Oreana is a product of her environment, and she admires and respects this powerful energy that comes from Beth. As a young, impressionable woman who has these two powerful women as influences in her life, she’s going to pull elements from both. But from the beginning, I wanted to make sure that the power Oreana brings is different from Beulah or Beth.
It’s going to be interesting in season two as my character develops. There’s so much backstory, and before we started filming, the creative team sat [all the Jackson actors] down to give us the family’s backstory. People have known the Duttons for years, and it almost feels like you know them personally because you’ve seen them on television for almost ten years. But the Jacksons also have a backstory, and I’m really looking forward to telling that story and explaining why Oreana is the way that she is.
You’ve been making television since the days when you were drinking juice boxes on set, so you probably know that whenever someone confesses their feelings and regrets in a climactic episode of TV, odds are they’re going to die. Did you sense what was coming when Rob-Will spilled his guts to Oreana in her bedroom?
I did! I am one of Jai Courtney’s biggest fans as a person. I’m so obsessed with his family, his wife Dina and their little girl. So I knew, subconsciously, it was going to happen, but I was really hoping that it wouldn’t because I love Rob-Will’s character. I’m the type of person who is enamored by the evil villain.
As I was reading, I was like, Oh, this is seeming a little bit too sweet. Usually, when happy moments happen in any of these shows, then usually something ten times worse happens right afterwards. That scene brought tears to my eyes for so many different reasons, even though I had an inkling that it was going to happen. I was still hoping that it wouldn’t happen, but it does make for really great television.
And instead of cutting to a big showdown scene between Joaquin/Kino (Juan Pablo Raba) and Rob-Will, the camera stays in Oreana’s perspective. Were you pretty intimated that you were the one who’d have to sell the season’s biggest death?
Definitely. It’s such a traumatic moment. Going into that scene, I just wanted it to feel extremely authentic. I obviously haven’t had any similar circumstances, but I have dealt with a lot of loss in my life. Rob-Will and Oreana have never had an easy relationship, but I don’t think that a lot of people understand that parents are also living their life for the first time too.
Her entire life, she has felt like her father loves the ranch more than her, and she feels the same thing about Beulah and Joaquin. Even my personal relationship with my father, I absolutely love my dad, but like Rob-Will, he has a hard time showing a more vulnerable side of himself. I wanted this sensitive moment to feel very genuine.
The worst thing she could have done is run toward a gunshot. That is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in movies and shows, especially horror movies. But she could feel this energy from her father that something was wrong, and that’s why she asks about it as he’s leaving her bedroom. So she already knew what that sound meant, and her instinct was to run to him. It was just a very vulnerable, sad moment, and reading it on the page broke me.
I really appreciated the fact that she didn’t peek out the door first. That was definitely a conversation. Would she run directly toward this gunshot sound? Would she scream his name first? But with the people that you love, you feel something subconsciously, and that’s why I really enjoyed that she jumped into action right away.
How many takes did you have to do of Oreana wailing over Rob-Will’s body?
Quite a few. Christina Voros — our director, DP, executive producer — is one of the best directors I have ever worked with. She’s an actor’s dream. She is so compassionate, and she has such understanding for character development. So she made it as comfortable and easy as possible for me. Jai and Annette did too. But even the minimum amount of takes have so many angles to capture, especially for such an important moment. So I don’t remember exactly how many there were, but it definitely wasn’t a one-and-done.
When Annette’s character walks in at the end and sees Oreana sitting over her father, it’s such a heartbreaking moment. We were shooting the reverse of Annette, and even though the camera wasn’t on me, I couldn’t stop crying off screen because of the vulnerability that she brought to that scene.
Oreana then looks outside to see Kino’s SUV driving away.
Yes, that was definitely a very important moment for her to see his car pull away. I’m very interested to see what she’s going to do with that information in season two. I don’t know what she’s going to do exactly, but she definitely feels like it’s Kino.
Dutton Ranch season two has already been greenlit, and THR just reported about new showrunner Benjamin Cavell moments before this interview. I heard you say somewhere that it’s not yet official that you’ll be back, but based on the season one finale, I don’t see any world where you don’t come back …
I saw that too, and it’s so funny to see what tidbits are taken from interviews. Somebody asked me about a spoiler for season two, and I didn’t want to jeopardize being brought back for season two. So that was a joke, although you never know. I am not going to say it’s 100 hundred percent, but that was definitely me being coy.
Her mother hasn’t been mentioned in any real way, but I would wager that Rob-Will’s death opens the door for her to return to Oreana’s life in some capacity. Is that something you’ve thought about at all?
I know the mother’s backstory, but nobody else does yet. I hope it’s brought into season two, but I’m going to leave it there for now. There’s definitely a lot more to find out about the Jacksons.
Now that her dad has been killed by her adoptive uncle, I wonder if that changes her motivation to not have Beulah’s life. She’s now next in line to inherit the family business, and maybe she’ll embrace it for her dad’s sake.
It’ll definitely be interesting going forward. There was no way to predict this happening in Oreana’s life. Between the pregnancy and also losing her father, Oreana is going to come back in season two as a completely different character. Something unfathomable happened to her, and any perspective she had on life is guaranteed to change. I’m really excited to see what that means and where it takes her.
Your family business is show business and, unlike Oreana, you obviously want to be in the family business. At the same time, you also started acting at 5 or 6 so you probably have no memory of your short life before it. Did you ever reach a point where you stopped to ask your grown-up self: “Do I truly love this, or is it just the only life I’ve ever known?”
There’s never been that moment, and I feel like I can freely say that for me and my two younger sisters. This was not something that our parents wanted us to get into at the time. There are a lot of scenarios where parents want their kids to be in this industry so they can capitalize off of their kids. So we had to beg our parents to let us do this. My sisters and I love acting so much. We love creating and storytelling.
When we were younger, we’d watch our mom [Barbara Alyn Woods] on set, and we were so inspired by the characters that she would create. There was this glamorous element of going to set with her and watching her in hair and makeup. It was always really funny to us if our mom was playing a raging alcoholic on TV because she could not be more opposite.
With my mom and my dad [AD/producer John Lind] also being in this industry, we’re all able to have conversations and relate to each other about so many of the crazy circumstances that happen within this industry. So I value their opinion when it comes to anything that I do. Any move I’ve made in terms of projects will go through them because I know that they have the best opinions. I’m just so grateful to have that family dynamic.
An actor named Emily Alyn Lind told me you’re a big fan of horror movies, and that made sense to me because I talked to Lindsey Beer during the strikes about Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. And I remember you drowning in mud on that movie.
I just saw Lindsey last week! We went and got coffee. That’s so funny. And I know Emily decently well. I’ve worked with her a couple times in the past.
That leads us to Halloween Store. My theory is that you weren’t satisfied with the quantity of horror movies you’ve made, and so you decided to do something about it by self-producing. How right or wrong is that idea?
I didn’t really think about it in that way. Halloween Store was really about me producing and being on the opposite side of the camera. It’s something I’ve always had an interest in since I was little, and the strike is when I started thinking about actually doing it. So it wasn’t necessarily because I wanted to be in more horror films. I just wanted to produce something, and horror has always been a constant and a passion in my life. It’s my favorite thing in every aspect.
In general, I absolutely love that feeling that you get in your chest when watching horror movies. And recently, with directors like Ari Aster, there’s a completely different side of horror that’s being taken very seriously. [Dutton Ranch co-star] Ed’s [Harris] wife, Amy Madigan, just won an Oscar for a horror film [Weapons]. So the entire genre is turning a page, and I could not be happier.
So it made sense for the first movie I produced to be a horror film. I want to continue to do a lot of horror movies, but I’m definitely interested in tapping into a lot of different genres.
Did you catch Obsession and Backrooms fever? Or have you been too busy with Dutton Ranch and Halloween Store?
I cannot believe that I’m one of the only people who has not seen Obsession yet. It’s only one of the most successful movies ever. But I have seen Backrooms, and I was absolutely blown away by it. Halloween Store is in its last two days of editing. We’re finishing our sound mix. So I’m about to be freed up to finally see Obsession.
I am just so excited that young creators are able to come into these worlds and have these unimaginable visions from such a young age. It’s so inspiring. And now that I’m in the producing world, I’m in the process of developing two other films. So I feel very inspired by my fellow peers. Obsession’s Cooper Tomlinson plays a deputy on Dutton Ranch …
I just spoke to Cooper, and weirdly, I happened to fire up my Dutton Ranch screeners right after I saw Obsession. I did the ultimate double take when I saw him in a cowboy hat.
Yeah, we started the show back in July [2025], and I talked to him about Obsession almost a year before it became one of the biggest movies of all time. So they have opened another new chapter in horror, and it’s thrilling as a fan and as a creator.
Lastly, decades from now, when you look back on Dutton Ranch season one, what day will you likely recall first?
The entire 10 Petal Ranch anniversary party was the first time that all the characters and storylines collided on the show. It was the first time that we were all together in the middle of Texas. It was three in the morning, and it was absolutely freezing. So we just started playing games, and at three in the morning, you start becoming really slap-happy. All of us were laughing and smiling and sharing stories while huddled next to a little space heater. You look one way, and Cole Hauser and Ed Harris are having one conversation. You look the other way and Annette Bening and Kelly Reilly are chatting. And then there’s me sitting with Jai Courtney, Juan Pablo Raba and Finn Little. Just seeing how kind everybody is and how happy everybody was to be there is something that I will always remember. I have so much gratitude that I was a part of it, and my heart is so full.
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Dutton Ranch season one is now streaming on Paramount+. Read our season one finale interview with Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser here.
