It’s no simple task to compile a list of Teeter’s (Jen Landon) best quotes on “Yellowstone.” Why? Because most of the time, you can scarcely make out what she’s saying.
The official “Yellowstone” Twitter account has put together a montage of the hardscrabble ranch hand’s best lines. They range from the unprintable to the barely intelligible (“Y’ain’t wonderin’ what I said now, are ya?”).
In one clip, Teeter introduces herself to Rip (Cole Hauser) and Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith). She tells them her name, but as usual, it’s tough to guess what she said.
“What’s that?” Rip asks.
“I think she said ‘Peter,’” Lloyd says. “Is your name Peter?”
“Do I look like my f—in’ name is Peter, you skunk-haired motherf—er?” Teeter replies.
“Does she look like her name is Peter?!” @Yellowstone tweeted Wednesday. “@TheJenLandon #Yellowstone.”
Watch the montage here:
In ‘Yellowstone’ Interview, Landon Said She ‘Tanked’ Audition
While Landon affectionately describes her character as a “feral, sh-t-kicking little weirdo,” she admits that she desperately wanted the part of Teeter. But she messed up the audition – and even muttered automatically, “I love you, too” to the casting associate as she left – so she thought she didn’t get it.
“I was super nervous,” Landon told the Bunkhouse Boys in a 2020 episode of “Stories from the Bunkhouse.” “I didn’t think I was gonna get it, at all. And I thought I tanked the audition… I thought I tanked it so hard, I kept having the casting associate read the scene again – like, ‘Do it again’ – which is also a big audition no-no, for any actors who are watching.”
As for how she portrays Teeter, a very physical character whose utterances are a bit of a mystery most of the time, Landon said she has some help from series co-creator Taylor Sheridan.
“People, they were like, ‘How did you come up with the way she spoke?’” she recounted. “And I was like, ‘I basically just read exactly what he [Sheridan] wrote.’”
Teeter’s Peculiar Speech Is Not an Accent
Fortunately for Landon, all she has to do is read the lines phonetically as Sheridan writes them. And that has saved her a lot of time and expense, she told Decider last year. It would have been tough to work with a dialect coach on Teeter’s speech because her way of talking is not an accent, Landon explained.
“It was so liberating in a way,” she said. “Because the moment a word is somewhat unrecognizable, you kind of get out of your left brain and go into your right brain. If the dialogue weren’t written phonetically, I would have talked to Taylor about very specific regions she was from, and her family, and worked with a dialect coach. One of the things I’ve been clear about from the beginning is that the way Teeter speaks is not representative of a region or a state or anything.”
So to prepare for playing Teeter, Landon basically just looked at pictures of female cowgirls and ranchers and read the lines as Sheridan had spelled them out.