The advice that helped Jai Courtney’s career? It came from Russell Crowe

The first time he met Russell Crowe, Jai Courtney got a piece of advice that has stood him in very good stead throughout his career. “Don’t bullshit me,” the Oscar winner said before Courtney had even had a chance to answer his, “Can you ride a horse?” query. “Every actor thinks they can ride a horse and play the harmonica.”

As it happens, Courtney, who grew up in Galston on the northern fringes of Sydney, is pretty decent in the saddle. “I can manage myself,” he says. “But I would never lay claim to playing a harmonica, that’s for sure.”

You can see how either of those skills might be called upon for his role in Dutton Ranch, the latest extension of the Taylor Sheridan universe.

A sequel to and/or spin-off from Yellowstone, the series stars Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton, daughter of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton III, and Cole Hauser as her husband, Rip Wheeler. After fire destroys their Montana property and wipes out everything they own, the pair relocate to Texas, taking over a smallish (read: actually very large) cattle ranch, where they soon butt horns with Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), the tough-as-nails matriarch of the area’s biggest property and its abattoir.

Courtney plays Beulah’s son Rob-Will (short for Robert William Jackson III), the wayward child who threatens to bring the dynasty down with his reckless carryings-on.

“Rob-Will’s in line to take the reins at some point, and the challenge he presents for Beulah is that he’s a bit of a liability, he’s a little unhinged, he can’t necessarily be trusted,” says Courtney. “He’s messy, and that’s not good for a legacy ranching family that has a lot at stake and a lot to preserve.”

Not good for the family, perhaps, but what’s it like to play?

“Oh, it’s a lot of fun,” he says. “I love roles where you get to come in and antagonise a little. I like being able to come in and mix things up a bit and ruffle a few feathers. It’s always a good time, and Rob-Will certainly delivers in that department.”

Rob-Will is, he readily admits, “another morally ambiguous fella” in a career littered with them (though some of his roles don’t even bother with the ambiguity so much – witness his serial-killer shark hunter in last year’s Dangerous Animals, the hilariously named Bruce Tucker).

In real life, he insists, he’s learnt to curb his natural inclination to “push buttons”, which he reckons is as much an Aussie trait as a personal one.

“It’s good to unnerve a few folks, but I know when to behave myself, and I certainly don’t get in any real trouble these days,” he says. “So it’s good to be able to step into those shoes on screen and maybe exorcise a few of those demons.”

He doesn’t only play villains of course – in the forthcoming Aussie film The Fox he plays a guy “who’s absolutely trying to make the world a better place” – but he accepts he’s been typecast a little.

“And I fully embrace it. There’s something unique about doing those characters well. I look at it as a challenge that I have to fulfil, to not make them predictable,” he says.

“I hate the idea of characters like that being motivated by evil or having intentions that are unjust. It’s always about finding what’s truthful to them, and if you serve to antagonise, making sure the audience is going to have a good time with that character, too.”

Even when he’s playing characters one might label “repulsive”, Courtney adds, “you always want people to feel there’s weirdly some kind of connection to it, or they want a bit more of it. And I think if that’s what I get done with some of these roles, then I’m happy. I’m happy to play someone who isn’t necessarily the hero.”

In Dutton Ranch, he’s certainly doing that. Within minutes of making his first appearance, Rob-Will has snorted coke, behaved like a complete piece of work, and shot a man dead. He’s off to a flying start.

Acting is all about “make-believe and play time”, says Courtney, and there’s no bigger playground in television right now than that of Taylor Sheridan. This is the fifth series in the Yellowstone lineage (aka the Duttonverse), with prequels 1883 and 1923 and crime procedural spin-off Marshals also in the gang (and a further two series, the present-day 6666 and the prequel 1944, reportedly in development).

There’s also Landman, Lioness, Tulsa King and the Michelle Pfeiffer-starring The Madison. In short, the Sheridan slate is bigger than Texas.

Does it feel like you’ve stepped into a kind of Game of Thrones for cowboys? Are you actually conscious of Dutton Ranch being a small part of this expanded narrative universe?

“I think people want to paint it like that a little more than is the reality of making it,” Courtney says. “I mean, it’s great, what a cool world to be a part of. But at the end of the day, you’re just trying to chase good story and good character and trying to make the thing you’re on as good as it possibly can be. Our show still has to succeed on its own, it has to tell its own story and be authentic to itself.”

Unlike much of the other stuff under the Sheridan umbrella, this one was not actually created by him (that honour belongs to Chad Feehan, who also created the Sheridan-produced Lawmen: Bass Reeves). “This wasn’t Taylor’s show, per se,” says Courtney. “But he’s around everything, man. He’s got his eye on it all. It’s obviously something he protects and I’m sure believes in.”

If there’s a Sheridan formula it has something to do with wide-open spaces, strong men and even stronger women, and an intoxicating mix of earthiness and ambition, dirt and diamonds. Dutton Ranch harks back to the glory days of Stetsons, shoulder pads and talons on 1980s shows Dynasty and Dallas. But there’s still a whiff of the dirty realism of Sheridan’s early film work on Sicario (which he wrote), Hell or High Water and Wind River (both of which he wrote and directed), his so-called American Frontier Trilogy.

But at core, says Courtney, the formula is even simpler. “They’re family dramas at the end of the day. The things the characters are grappling with are usually really grounded, but there’s enough crime, enough bodies showing up, enough sex, drugs and rock’n’roll to keep it adult and juicy enough for people to want to keep engaging with.”

A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, in Perth, Courtney had just a couple of credits to his name when he shipped off to Los Angeles in his mid-20s. The move worked out for him. He picked up meaty roles in high-profile features such as Terminator Genisys, Insurgent and Divergent, and a pair of Suicide Squad films in which he played a fast-talking villain named Captain Boomerang. But he’s come home to work plenty, too, in Felony (a police drama written by and co-starring Joel Edgerton), Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner, and the Spierig Brothers’ time-travel sci-fi puzzler Predestination, starring Sarah Snook and Ethan Hawke.

You’ve done film and TV, indie and studio, big budget and small. Where do your preferences lie?

“I like the medium of TV for the long-form storytelling,” he says. “It’s a cool platform to be able to examine drama from, because you can have a lot going on at the same time and it doesn’t have to be a singular plot. But there’s a lot you can’t get away with in TV as well, that film is always going to have a place for.”

He loves working on movies, he adds, with their tighter focus and intense production schedules. “This film I’m doing right now has a tiny little budget. We’re going to be shooting in the mountains of Utah, in the dirt, digging in for a really tight little shoot, and those things are often the most exhausting and the most fun, and you come out of that kind of experience changed.”

TV can be “really cushy”, he says, especially on a show with a decent budget – which Dutton Ranch clearly has. “You get a nice-sized trailer, you hang out, you get some craft service [on-set catering], you have your coffee, you say your words, and you f— off home. You know, that’s lovely, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better or worse. It’s just a different thing.

“For me, it’s always character and material and who you’re getting to work with,” he adds. “And I think we’re always chasing to try and tick at least a couple of those boxes to motivate what we’re doing next.”

Dutton Ranch streams on Paramount+ from May 15.

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