Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser Discuss How Dutton Ranch Changes Beth and Rip After Yellowstone

We're definitely not in Montana anymore. 

On Dutton Ranch, the new Yellowstone spin-off that premieres Friday on Paramount+ and Paramount Network, Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly), her husband Rip (Cole Hauser), and their adopted son Carter (Finn Little) have left Big Sky Country for Texas, and it's a whole different world. After spending nearly their entire lives fighting to keep what the Duttons already had, Beth and Rip are now tasked with starting over on a new ranch with its own legacy and potentially nasty neighbors, and it's certainly not going to be an easy ride. 

For one, Beth now gets to figure out who she is without her father John Dutton (Kevin Costner), her brothers Kayce (Luke Grimes) and Jamie (Wes Bentley), or her powerful family name. 

"Beth isn't in fight mode," Reilly tells TV Guide. "Like, when she was protecting the ranch for John, she was always going to battle. So this is almost like a quieter, more thoughtful Beth, in my opinion, than I've ever seen." 

She's also still grieving the death of her father, the loss of her family's home, and more as the new show begins. 

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"When you go through a tremendous loss, I think that you're not the same person beyond it," Reilly says. "I think she sacrificed a lot of her own happiness, if I'm honest, for her father's dream. I think she would do that every lifetime. That's who she is, but I get to ask the question now for her: What makes me happy? What do I want? So I'm lingering in those questions, but she doesn't have much time to linger, because the challenges are coming thick and fast, and she's having to survive again. The challenges are different, but it is certainly a woman who is taking stock. I think that hole in her heart for the loss of her father, I felt that was very much under my skin the entire season. It was just close to me always." 

Despite the grief and all the new challenges to be found on Dutton Ranch, Rip's new beginning has the potential to be a great change of pace. 

"There's tremendous responsibility that he had on Yellowstone," Hauser says. "He was the enforcer, the ranch manager. He ran the bunk house. He was John Dutton's loyal soldier, he had Beth as the love of his life. So there were all these responsibilities for him that get kind of stripped away [in Dutton Ranch]. Going down to Texas, it's [about] how do we live in this peaceful, serene place and do what he loves, which is cowboy?'' 

Carter, who is now 19, has settled into life with Beth and Rip, and he has a much larger presence on Dutton Ranch than he did on Yellowstone. As he makes friends (and enemies) with some of the local teens, Little says there's "so much more to tell." 

One of those teens is Oreana, played by Natalie Alyn Lind, who describes Oreana and Carter's relationship as "a roller coaster." 

That's a good word for all the relationships on the show, including the working one that Beth is trying to foster with Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), an imposing and powerful fellow ranch owner who is equally suspicious of the new family in town. 

"It's like these, these two heavyweights suddenly meeting one another and recognizing one another, sniffing each other out," Reilly says. 

"It's admiration and competition," Bening adds. 

Ranch life certainly is no picnic — and let this be a warning that this show is not for the faint of heart — so both their admiration and their competition could get messy. 

The first two episodes of Dutton Ranch premiere May 15 on Paramount+ and at 8/7c on Paramount Network.