Why 1883 Star LaMonica Garrett’s Role Made Him a Cowboy to the Core
Pictured: Sam Elliott and LaMonica Garrett team up for a high stakes journey across the Wild West in 1883, The prequal to Yellowstone. Photo Cr: Emerson Miller/Paramount+ (C) 2022 MTV Entertainment Studios. All Rights Reserved.
BY APRIL NEALE
I
n short order, LaMonica Garrett became a rough-riding cowboy for his breakout role as Thomas in Paramount+’s breakout hit, 1883. Thomas is a laconic cowboy (formerly a Civil War veteran) who rides into the unknown with his partner Shea (Sam Elliott) and John Dutton’s great-grandfather, James Dutton (Tim McGraw). These men become the leaders of a slowly dwindling group of brave souls looking for a better life in the Oregon coastal valleys. To get there, they had to brave hostile Native American territories and swaths of desolate lands filled with bandits, mercurial weather, and lethal snakes hidden in the grass. Paramount+’s 1883 is the origin story of Yellowstone’s Dutton family. In 1883, the Dutton ancestors are heading West 20
with no idea what to expect, and this is showrunner Taylor Sheridan’s latest effort in the expanding Yellowstone mythology, filled with realistic narratives as well as the perspective of Thomas, or the story told through his costar, Isabel May as well as Thomas’s slow-building love interest with Noemi (Gratiela Brancusi), one of the immigrants looking for a new life. This expansive POV was not lost on Garrett or how profoundly it influenced his performance throughout the series. “Some showrunners want to change things or do things just for doing it,” he says. “The idea is that I should be doing something when sometimes the best thing to do is take a step back and let the people you hired bring these characters to life and embrace each other. Taylor Sheridan knows that, and his words are so powerful. The
www.idahomemagazine.com
script was just so amazing. Sam [Elliott] and I have to say these [written] words and be truthful about what we’re saying and where these words are coming from, and the rest will figure itself out.” In Sheridan’s vision of 1883, Garrett’s Thomas was accepted as part of the norm for the times in America, fresh out of the Civil War and slavery. We know today that one out of four cowboys were African-American. However, Sheridan’s take on Thomas and Garrett’s interpretation of this complex Civil War veteran-turned-cowboy revealed a lesser-known history for audiences starved for veracity and fresh takes on a well-worn genre. This realistic approach by Sheridan was not lost on Garrett, who devoted his Twitter feed in February to educating his followers on real Black cowboys who thrived
