
About a decade ago, Christian Wallace was working on oil rigs in his native West Texas. Today, he’s co-creator and executive producer of “Landman,” a hit TV series inspired by the roughnecks he’s known his whole life. So you can understand why he calls the show’s November premiere in Los Angeles—held on a Paramount studio lot decked out with oil drums—an “out-of-body experience.”
Wallace grew up in the Permian Basin town of Andrews, about 30 miles east of the New Mexico border. After his brief, post–grad school stint on the rigs, his writing aspirations led him to a job at Texas Monthly. In 2019, the magazine produced “Boomtown,” a documentary podcast about the oil boom’s effect on, well, everything. Wallace reported, wrote, and hosted all 12 episodes.
“Boomtown” soon caught the attention of “Yellowstone” maestro Taylor Sheridan, who optioned it for the screen in 2020. He brought Wallace aboard, and together, they created “Landman,” which stars Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, a crisis manager who puts out fires in the oil industry—sometimes literally.
“It was fun to go through my rolodex of stories I had heard growing up,” Wallace says about working closely with Sheridan. Here, he speaks with Backstage about turning West Texas life into a must-see Paramount+ drama.
What did you and Taylor Sheridan each bring to your creative mind meld?
Moments [on the show] are straight out of my life and incorporate things that I had seen or reported when I was working in West Texas, like the bikini-clad baristas. I’ve had multiple people be like, “That’s not real. Why would y’all put that in the show?” I’m like, “That’s absolutely real. It’s part of the culture of the boomtown.”
Taylor, obviously, he’s the king of dialogue. He knows how to write action. He can wring action out of someone going to the gas station.
How did you work with the actors to make sure their performances felt authentic?
Before we ever set foot on that set, the costume department was reaching out. I helped them source authentic clothing from roughnecks who work on rigs so that we could age the clothes correctly and dye them. When the actor puts on those clothes and they look like they just stepped off the rig, I think that helps them transport themselves to that place.
Being on set every day to talk to them about the scene [helped], especially with Billy. He has so many monologues in the show that are pretty technical and complex. In the morning, before we started shooting, he called me over and was like, “Walk me through what this means.” I was happy to do that. He told me, “I can’t say the words right if I don’t understand what I’m saying.”
Another step was giving them resources and tools to inhabit those characters properly. We had a real working oil rig, where a crew came out and taught them various positions on the rig. We had [safety crew] on set every day, at all times. Our actors really ran the rig and were up in the derrick and worked the tongs, which is like a huge hydraulic wrench. I kept thinking, Wow, they’re gonna let us do that?
Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+
How involved were you with the casting process?
I got to be there for every major character that we cast. Not Billy Bob; Taylor wrote specifically with Billy in mind.
We had a lot of great actors audition for those roles. I don’t have a ton of experience with that process, but as someone who’s loved film and TV for my entire life, it was thrilling to see. [You think,] Oh, well, that’s not the version of the character in my head. But you play it out with all these different actors. In the end, you go with your gut.
What character archetypes did you know needed to be represented?
You put it a good way—there are so many archetypes. There’s the pithy café waitress. That’s a real person. There are the young, hungry, somewhat aggressive roughneck crews. Those are real people. Cooper [Tommy’s son, played by Jacob Lofland], this up-and-coming roughneck who’s wanting to impress his father, follow in his father’s footsteps, but also forge his own path—that is something that is very relatable to me.
What are films or TV shows that you think actors should watch to learn how to play a Texan right?
“Friday Night Lights,” the movie, does a really fantastic job of capturing West Texas. Another one that I think is just a beautiful shot of small-town Texas life, [and] holds up remarkably, is Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film “The Last Picture Show.”
What have folks back home said to you about “Landman”?
I’ve had people reach out and just say, “Hey, thanks for shining a light on this part of the world and our lives.” That’s been the most rewarding thing so far: getting to tell stories of folks who don’t necessarily have their stories told.
For the very first episode, we took a second unit out to West Texas to shoot a bunch of exteriors and establishing shots. I took them to this special place for me, which is a little salt lake outside of Andrews called Shafter Lake…. It’s where we’d go to make out and drink beer back in high school. It had never been filmed, to my knowledge. I’ve had so many people from my town reach out and be like, “Hey, I saw Shafter Lake in the first episode.” That’s been cool, to put these little places that so few people know [onscreen], now being seen by millions of people.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.