NEED TO KNOW
Ali Larter returns as firecracker Texas housewife Angela on Landman season 2, and in this week’s issue, she opens up about why she loves the role and the importance of her quiet family life in Idaho
Larter and her husband, Hayes MacArthur, relocated with their two kids to Sun Valley, Idaho three years ago, and the actress tells PEOPLE that the quiet life has “been a gift for our family”
As her focus returns to Landman, which premieres Nov. 16, Larter talks working with Billy Bob Thornton and calls the show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, a “provocateur”
When Ali Larter is not working, she’s living an idyllic life in the mountains of Idaho, and she doesn’t know if she could manage her demanding career without that escape.
Life is picking up again as the premiere of Landman season 2, the hit Taylor Sheridan series about Texas’ booming oil business, approaches, and Larter, 49, feels lucky that she just spent six weeks at home with her two kids — son Teddy, 14, and daughter Vivienne, 10 — and her husband, Hayes MacArthur.
“I’m cooking dinners and allowing myself to sleep in, or going to yoga or taking long hikes with the dogs,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “And I’m at every soccer game and every soccer practice, and that really feeds me.”
She and MacArthur, 48, relocated to Sun Valley in 2022 and have been living in their mountainside dream home, which sits on two acres of land, ever since. It’s particularly beautiful this time of year, she says. “The leaves are turning, so all the aspens are yellow. It’s just magic.”
Ali Larter/Instagram
Ali Larter at home in Idaho
The quiet mountain life suits her. “It’s incredibly calming and grounding to live in the mountains, and we love raising our children in a rural small town,” she says.
After years of living in L.A., she’s all the more appreciative of having quality time where she’s not being drawn in a million different directions. “It’s important to me that when I come home, I can be present with my children,” the actress says.
Life in Idaho “has been a gift for our family,” she says. “Especially with how busy my career is right now.”
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Larter starts her days there dropping her kids at school, and she goes on long hikes with her dogs and has committed to three family dinners a week. When she’s gone — Landman films in Fort Worth, Texas, and she was away for five months this year — she relies on MacArthur as “my support system.”
“And then when he leaves, I can hold down the fort,” she says of how she makes it work with the fellow actor. “He’s my rock.”
In the same way that life in Idaho feels like a dream, so, too does working on Landman, which sees Larter play Angela Norris, the firecracker ex-wife of Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris. The couple reconciled on season 1, and the forthcoming season promises more of their hilarious antics.
Ali Larter/Instagram
Ali Larter with husband Hayes MacArthur and kids Teddy and Vivienne
“I get to work, I think, next to one of the best actors working in our business, and he brings out the best in me,” she says of Thornton, 70. “In our world, when we’re working together, there’s just never an inauthentic beat, and that is incredible. I love him so much.”
Playing Angela, who is typically dressed in either a skin-tight dress, a bikini or a workout set, is admittedly daunting for Larter — but there’s a sense of empowerment the role also gives her.
“Anytime you have to put on a bathing suit and walk in front of anybody, it’s really difficult,” she admits. “When I look around, the sexiest women I know are the women that own it. So, part of getting there with Angela is owning it. There is no space in my mind for insecurity — I’m not allowing any of that into my space when I play Angela.”
Ryan Green/Paramount+
Ali Larter and Billy Bob Thornton on ‘Landman’ season 1
“Angela walks through life without the fear of judgment of others,” Larter continues. “She makes up her own rules. And for me, that’s so exciting to play, because I’m not like that. And you really can’t be like that in most areas of life if you want to fit into the societal norms.”
Playing such a free-spirited and confident woman is “so freeing and so exciting” for her, regardless of the criticism that her storyline has received since the show’s premiere last year.
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“Taylor is a provocateur. He loves to write characters that make people respond, that initiate a reaction, a feeling,” she says of Sheridan, 55, who not only created the series but is a writer and director on it.
Larter adds, “I think that what’s incredible about our show and a lot of the shows that Taylor makes is that they’re all wildly original and authentic to themselves, and that’s what I think is really exciting.”
Landman season 2 premieres Nov. 16 on Paramount+
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