‘Landman’: What’s Real and What’s Exaggerated According to the Series Co-Creator, Once an Oil Roughneck Himself

Like so many Taylor Sheridan series, “Landman” examines a unique American subculture. In this case, it’s the oil drilling ecosystem that draws workers and billionaires alike to Texas. Series co-creator Christian Wallace is the man on set who keeps things realistic. Wallace was the host of “Boomtown,” the podcast about the oil industry that “Landman” is based on. Beyond his duties as a host and journalist, the native West Texan spent time working as an oil roughneck himself, and grew up in a family with members in the fields. He spoke to Variety about how he’s able to balance accuracy on the show while making sure that juicy storylines can keep moving along.

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Beyond creating the show with Taylor Sheridan, how are you involved in the day-to-day operation?

I’m really lucky in that I’ve been on set every day for two seasons, working with pretty much every department, our cast and crew. Taylor is writing it. I’m helping as far as bouncing ideas off him and giving him fuel stock that he can then Taylor-ize into the greatness that is the show, and the high stakes drama and the comedy of it all. He trusts me to be the guy on set to call a flag if we’re trying to hew to authenticity wherever we can. There aren’t a whole lot of West Texans who have worked on an oil rig running around the set, but I am one. Even from Season 1 to Season 2, it’s amazing to see how much our cast and crew have learned about the oil and gas business, about West Texas, about all these things. I was answering so many more questions in Season 1. And now I’m like, “All right, Billy, you’re halfway to becoming a landman. You’ve got a lot of this stuff down now.”

It’s been a crazy journey for me from doing a podcast in 2019 to Taylor acquiring the rights. Then we talked about the show for two years before Season 1 came out. We had just been talking about characters and ideas and what the show was going to be, and he asked me to write a script based on all the stories that we had talked about. I did that, and I got a call from him, and it’s one of those life-changing calls where he says, “Well, buddy, you’re going to be the co-creator of the show and executive producer, and I want you on board to help me make this thing.” So I’m really, really grateful that Taylor did that and brought me in, because he totally could have just taken the rights and run with it. Instead, he’s let me be an integral part of the show, so I’m really grateful for that.

On a show like this, you sometimes might not want the facts to get in the way of a good story. How are you able to find the line between accuracy and not wanting to get bogged down in the details that could slow down a compelling narrative?

This has been a journey for me for sure. I was a fact checker and a journalist, so I believe in Capital “T” Truth. But that’s part of what Taylor has had to teach me. Our mission is to entertain first. Even from Season 1 to Season 2, I’ve gotten better at understanding where to compromise on elements of truth. We’re still always going to try to get as close to the real deal as we can. We use real drilling rigs, real roughnecks. That stuff is as authentic as we can possibly make it. But the complexity of what they’re doing and the processes, you could easily get bogged down in those details. So we will use shortcuts that are, say, a visual cue of using a pressure gauge to help the audience understand, “This is what’s happening.” Maybe this gauge wouldn’t really be doing that in this scene, but it helps translate what we’re trying to get across in the easiest way possible. So the oil and gas guy may be like, “Wait, what type of gauge are you talking about right there?” But it’s just a storytelling device. At the end of the day, I think even the people who were so skeptical about us making a show about the industry, once they saw it, they were like, “Oh, you guys actually really did get a lot of the details right.” So I’m really proud of that. But it continues to be a thing that we navigate, of how to tell the best story while also incorporating as much authenticity as possible.

Have you met people in the oil business whose personalities are as big as the characters in “Landman”?

The field is full of big personalities, and Texas at large is full of big personalities. The number of people who have come up to me, like, “Oh, I know an Angela,” or “I know an Ainsley” — there are a lot of versions of Tommy Norris out there. One of the brilliant things about the way that Taylor approaches these characters is he’ll take a kernel of truth about something and just expand it to its most dramatic or comedic height. For instance, Tommy is a landman — here it is in the title of our show. But he really does three or four different jobs you would have in the oil field. We need him to have this dynamic occupation, because if we actually showed just what a landman did, which is basically pull files and look things up on a computer, nobody would watch that show. It’d be very, very boring. Taylor’s good at taking what a landman actually does and then putting him in all these different scenarios that make the show fun to watch.

The cartel is such a big part of the action in this show. In real life, are those machinations in play?

I’ll say this: I’ve never met a landman who’s had a bag put over his head and got pistol-whipped. But I will also say there are kernels of truth. The cartel landing the plane in Season 1 on a rural road, that’s based on a real story that I read in an oral history of the Texas Rangers. The cartel was landing these planes on extremely rural roads out in West Texas, offloading their cargo, and the Texas Rangers ambushed them one night. So there are elements of it. There’s oil theft right now. People are stealing oil from the tanks before they’re sent down the pipeline, and the cartel has been implicated in that. So there’s all of these actual elements. A lot of the things that people think, “Oh, there’s no way that’s real,” a lot of that is based on reality.

Some episodes discuss viewpoints about the oil industry that we haven’t seen much before on television. Are you hoping to show people some of the real-life conversations taking place?

I don’t think we’re trying to message anything, but these are real conversations that people in the industry, people in West Texas, have that wider audiences have not been privy to before this show. So it’s not that every single thing is black and white truth, but it’s how those characters feel and believe and talk. We see nuance unfolding because it’s a very dynamic, multifaceted, complex industry. This show is one insight into parts of that very vast industry, and it’s one that very few audiences have ever seen or heard or know anything about. So I think it’s a great place to start a wider conversation about energy and have people thinking about it.

Is there one big misconception people seem to have about the oil industry?

Just how little people know or think about it at all, even though we interact with it on a daily basis. Growing up in West Texas in a small town that lives and dies by oil booms and busts, it was not an abstract concept for me. It was very visceral; it’s an elemental substance that would come home soaked into the clothes and underneath the fingernails of my friends’ dads, my uncle, my grandpa. I think to remind people that oil is not just men in business suits in skyscrapers in the cities: It’s men and women who literally risk their lives and limbs to power our modern world. We are all the beneficiaries of that industry in that way. This is just a way to spotlight those workers and what they do. It takes a lot of skill, a lot of knowledge to do what they do, to make it all work without there being more accidents and problems. Giving people a chance to say, “I had never recognized that before,” that’s meaningful to me.

Do you have a favorite Tommy quote that sticks with you?

Yes, I think going back to Season 1, after he smashes his finger and Sheriff Joeberg says, “You want to go to the hospital?” And he says, “No, I want a cigarette and a Dr. Pepper.” He sits there and smokes it and drinks his Dr. Pepper, and then says, “Now I want to go to the hospital.” I just love that scene. That’s an actual quote from my uncle. He lost this finger in an accident about three or four years ago on a rig. That was his exact quote. When he climbed down the derrick, they asked him, “You want to go to the hospital?” “No, I want a cigarette and a Dr. Pepper.” To have Billy say that and just recreate that moment, it’s so cool and surreal.

“Landman” airs on Sundays on Paramount+. This interview has been edited and condensed.