Taylor Sheridan Pitched ‘Landman’ to Billy Bob Thornton as “Bad Santa Running an Oil Company” — Inside the Casting Story

When you think of Billy Bob Thornton running an oil company in West Texas, there’s a very specific energy that comes to mind — and according to Taylor Sheridan, that energy was always meant to be “Bad Santa running an oil company.” And honestly? That’s the most perfect pitch for Landman you’ll ever hear.

Sheridan dropped this delightful origin story during a June 29 appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, revealing exactly how he convinced Thornton to sign on for what would become one of Paramount+’s biggest hits. The pitch was refreshingly simple: take the boozy, foul-mouthed, chaotic energy of Thornton’s iconic Willie T. Soke from the 2003 Christmas classic Bad Santa, transplant him to the oil fields of West Texas, and let him run wild. The result? Two seasons of television gold that’s pulled in millions of viewers and cemented Thornton’s Tommy Norris as one of the most watchable characters on streaming right now.

How the Pitch Went Down

“I said, basically, I want to take your character from Bad Santa and put him in West Texas and run an oil company,” Sheridan recalled on the podcast. “He goes, ‘You want the guy from Bad Santa to run an oil company?’ I said, ‘That’s what I want.’ He goes, ‘That sounds [expletive] awesome.'”

And just like that, one of the most entertaining duos in modern television was born. Sheridan — the man behind the sprawling Yellowstone universe — had found his leading man. The show, loosely based on the Texas Monthly podcast Boomtown and co-created by Christian Wallace, takes a gritty, darkly comedic look at the West Texas oil industry through the eyes of Tommy Norris, a landman (an oil and gas industry fixer) who’d rather drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes than deal with the chaos around him.

Why Tommy Norris Is Essentially Bad Santa in Oil Country

If you’ve watched Landman, the comparison makes immediate sense. Tommy Norris drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, and has zero filter when it comes to speaking his mind. He’s a man who’s seen it all, done most of it, and regrets about half. That’s Willie T. Soke energy if we’ve ever seen it — just swap the shopping mall for an oil rig and the Santa suit for a dusty work jacket.

The Star-Telegram actually put together a guide tracking every time Thornton’s character smokes and drinks across the show’s first two seasons. Spoiler: it’s a lot. But that’s precisely the point. There’s an authenticity to Thornton’s performance that comes from playing a character who’s completely unapologetic about who he is. In a television landscape full of polished anti-heroes, Tommy Norris stands out because he’s not trying to be anything other than exactly what you see.

Thornton himself has acknowledged the spiritual connection. “I think a lot of it, and this is just my feeling, it’s because the characters are all unabashedly who they are, and they’re just honest about everything,” he told USA TODAY. “Taylor’s shows normally will have a vibe, and this has several — emotion and humor and drama and absurdity and danger, all those different things.”

Sheridan’s Midas Touch

This isn’t Sheridan’s first rodeo — the man has built an empire on turning niche American subcultures into must-watch television. The Yellowstone franchise redefined what modern Westerns could look like. Tulsa King proved he could do mob comedy with Stallone. 1923 showed he could do prestige period drama. And Special Ops: Lioness demonstrated he could handle intense military thrillers. But Landman might be his most purely fun show yet — and that’s entirely by design.

The “Bad Santa” origin story reveals something important about Sheridan’s creative process. He doesn’t just write roles; he writes characters specifically tailored to the actors he wants. For Thornton, Sheridan wrote the role of Tommy Norris in the actor’s own voice. “Taylor said, ‘I’m writing this show around you about the oil business, and I’m going to write in your voice,'” Thornton told USA TODAY in 2025. “It sounds like a joke, but it’s tailor-made for me.”

From a True Story to a Hit Series

The origins of Landman go back even further than the “Bad Santa” pitch. Sheridan got the idea from his high school friend, who actually worked as an oil company fixer — the real-life version of what Tommy Norris does on the show. One day, Sheridan saw a news story about a man driving through Odessa, Texas, shooting wildly before being killed by police. Concerned, he called his friend to check if he was okay.

“He started telling me stories,” Sheridan said, “and that’s when I got the idea for ‘Landman.'”

Those stories turned into a goldmine of material. Combined with Christian Wallace’s award-winning Boomtown podcast from Texas Monthly, the series had a wealth of authentic source material to draw from. The result is a show that feels lived-in and real, even at its most absurd moments.

What’s Next for Tommy Norris

With the show already renewed for a third season and consistently pulling strong numbers for Paramount+, it’s clear that the “Bad Santa running an oil company” formula works. Taylor Sheridan continues to expand his television empire, and Billy Bob Thornton seems to be having the time of his life playing the role he was born to play.

If you haven’t checked out Landman yet, think of it this way: it’s what happens when one of the most talented showrunners working today decides to write a drama around one of the most talented actors working today and gives them permission to just have fun. The whiskey’s always flowing, the cigarettes are always lit, and the dialogue crackles with the kind of authenticity you can only get from a show that knows exactly what it wants to be.

There’s also a broader lesson here about how great television gets made. In an era where streaming algorithms and focus groups increasingly dictate creative decisions, Sheridan’s approach feels almost antiquated: find a interesting character, match them with the perfect actor, and trust the chemistry to do the rest. It’s a bet that’s paid off consistently. Landman isn’t just successful because of the setting or the writing — it works because Thornton embodies Tommy Norris in a way that no other actor could. The “Bad Santa” pitch wasn’t a gimmick; it was a shortcut to understanding exactly what kind of energy the show needed at its center.

And what it wants to be — according to the man who created it — is “Bad Santa running an oil company.” That’s television, folks. That’s the good stuff.