According to the stars of Dutton Ranch, filming the show turned into a nightmare at times because of the large number of rattlesnakes on set.
The newest addition to Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone franchise, Dutton Ranch, premiered its first two episodes on Friday, May 15.
With the new series finally here, fans were reunited with two beloved characters from the original show, Beth Dutton (played by Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (played by Cole Hauser).
If you’ve already tuned into the premiere episodes, then you know that Beth and Rip have officially traded Montana for Texas, which is a huge change for longtime Yellowstone fans.
Paramount+ shared the show’s logline, which reads:
“As Beth and Rip fight to build a future together – far from the ghosts of Yellowstone – they collide with brutal new realities and a ruthless rival ranch that will stop at nothing to protect its empire. In South Texas, blood runs deeper, forgiveness is fleeting, and the cost of survival might just be your soul.”
Filming in Texas also brought a completely new experience for the cast and crew, and it wasn’t exactly an easy adjustment.
Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser recently stopped by The Kelly Clarkson Show to promote the series, and while they were there, they revealed that they ran into some pretty dangerous situations on set… including being surrounded by rattlesnakes.
Clarkson brought up the massive rattlesnake population in Fort Worth during the conversation. Since she’s a native of the area, she knows all about it, so she was curious if the cast had any issues while filming there for nearly a year.
“In Fort Worth, look, I know because I lived there, and there are a lot of rattlesnakes there,” Clarkson said. “People don’t realize how many snakes are there. So I imagine y’all had kind of a time with that.”
It turns out they weren’t dealing with just a small problem. According to Hauser, the situation was much worse than anyone would expect.
“Eight months, 3,400 rattlesnakes we caught,” he said.
Thankfully, they did have professional snake wranglers on set at all times. Even with that, though, there were still so many rattlesnakes around that the cast was constantly worried about accidentally running into one while cameras were rolling.
“We have snake wranglers, like literally six of them on set at any point, and I’m in these stiletto heels running through fields,” Reilly says. “And I’m just praying, like, please let them have gotten all the snakes in this vicinity. and they would just pick them up and put them somewhere far away from us.”
There was even one night when filming had to be completely canceled because there were so many snakes in the area, according to Hauser.
“That particular location we were at, we actually were going to go from there at night and got turned away,” he revealed. “Christina (the show’s director) found like, I don’t know, 40 or 50 rattlesnakes.”
When Do New Episodes Of Dutton Ranch Come Out?
The first season of Dutton Ranch has been confirmed to have a total of nine episodes.
The show is streaming exclusively on Paramount+, with new episodes releasing weekly on Fridays. As mentioned, the first two episodes are already out, so if you’re not caught up yet, now’s the time to tune in before the story continues and you risk running into spoilers!
Below is the schedule for when new episodes of Dutton Ranch will drop.
- May 22: Episode 3
- May 29: Episode 4
- June 5: Episode 5
- June 12: Episode 6
- June 19: Episode 7
- June 26: Episode 8
- July 3: Episode 9