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There are very few actors who captivate me more than Jon Hamm. I’m not one of those people who gets fixated on celebrities, but when it comes to the Landman star, it’s a whole different story. In fact, my besties and I have been binge-watching Mad Men again, and when we aren’t distracted by his dashing good looks, we’re blown away by his acting skills, which many critics applaud as one of the greatest performances of all time.
Since I’m such a Hamm Stan (yes, I’ve coined the term), I was thrilled to discover that the seasoned actor was portraying a pivotal role in Taylor Sheridan’s Western drama series, Landman. It felt too good to be true! He’d hung up his 1960s fedora for a cowboy hat, and I was all for it. It turns out it was too good to be true. When I discovered he would no longer be returning to play Monty on the Taylor Sheridan series, I was devastated. Why was Monty killed off in the season 1 ending? Were there scheduling conflicts? Creative differences? On-set drama? I needed to know. So after careful research, I finally have all the answers.
Here's the real reason Jon Hamm left Taylor Sheridan's Landman on Paramount+.
Why did they get rid of Jon Hamm on Landman?
As it turns out, there’s (thankfully) no drama involved in the Mad Men star’s swift exit on Landman. Jon Hamm is a busy actor, and with so many other commitments, he didn’t have time to do more than one season of the show. Luckily, the show creators were able to create a storyline that worked with his short time on the series.
In fact, if you watch the Paramount+ series more carefully, you’ll realize that it was always supposed to turn out this way when it comes to Monty’s tragic fate. Landman co-creator, Christian Wallace, detailed his character’s passing in an interview with TV Insider.
Emerson Miller/Paramount+
“Yeah, you kind of drop these little pieces throughout the entire season,” he revealed. “There’s Monty checking his heart rate on his watch or his wife Cami telling him no more coffee, and just little things that were dropped this entire time to kind of let you know that something’s going on so that when it does finally happen, it’s not just completely out of nowhere.”
He continued, explaining, “But you also don’t wanna be too heavy-handed about it and just telegraph that explicitly to the viewers. So, it’s just kind of a matter of trying to strike that balance of letting people know that there’s an issue without making it just the only thing that they can think about.”
Well, there you have it, folks. No drama or crazy BTS tea, just a script decision that allowed Jon Hamm to be in the first season and provided an emotional arc for the rest of the series. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the program and the characters’ journeys, now that Monty has officially left the building. What do you think will happen in season 2 of the western drama?
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