Minka Kelly as Quinn O’Grady

Quinn has been in love with Staten for a long time, but the pair have never made it work…. but will they now?

Previously, Kelly’s Quinn was a successful concert pianist In New York, but she returns to her hometown of Ransom Canyon to start a new chapter in her life.

Ava Phillippe plays young Amalah in a brief flashback. Are you wanting her to come back in the future? Do you want to do more flashbacks? 

Blair: That could be a whole spinoff of its own, the OG love triangle of Ransom Canyon. We would love for her to come back. She was amazing. I literally had a cameraman on set who came up and was like, That girl looks exactly like Reese Witherspoon. I was like, “Funny you should say that.”

Did you want someone with a recognizable face for young Amalah? 

Blair: Yeah. We cast that character with a lot of care, even though it was for this little bit, but we just wanted to be prepared and to be able to use it more in future seasons, or as its own show, potentially. I just thought it was fun, and also just what Ava brings to it is very much A-type, bossy. It just made it easier to communicate who that character was, and because Amalah looms larger than life in everyone’s world, and they’re always talking about her, that when we finally saw her face, we wanted it to be someone that was exciting.

Was there a debate about whether or not to have Cap die this season?

Blair: No. Actually, one of the most nerve-wracking things I had to do as a showrunner was drive to Jim’s house in Malibu that she shares with Barbra Streisand and pitch him to do the show. From the start, I was like, “Look, it is a one-season show.” Because of Cap and what that character represents, you want someone who was iconic, but that person was not going to sign up for eight seasons. I always thought it would be fun to just get someone very recognizable, that had some gravitas, and convince them to come play for a few episodes. Jim was totally on board. From the start, it was sort of crafted to be a shorter thing. But we had so much fun with Jim, and Jim was like, “I’ll stay and do more seasons.” But at that point in the season, it felt like you needed some kind of bigger loss or change, something to take people down in a different path and be affected by. We thought about it for a little bit, but I was like, no, it’s just really important in all these other characters’ stories.

Since Yancy is Lincoln Fuller’s son, he’s the heir to Fuller Ranch. With Cap dead, is Yancy truly ready for the pressure of the Fuller legacy? 

Blair: He’s never had anything and was also sort of was a grifter. Again, these Westerns are morality tales. It’s a morality tale for him, like, will he do the right thing? In my mind, Yancy came because he never had a family, and he came to get revenge for that. Instead, he didn’t get revenge, he got the family. I think he is actually a very loyal person, and he has turned a new leaf. I do think, moving forward, the challenges of running the ranch and also the challenge of the temptations and the challenge of this person from his past showing up, his wife, and kind of compromising what he wants to accomplish, it’ll be rocky.

Is Yancy’s father really dead? 

Blair: Yes. He died in the war. I feel like it’s the foundation of his plot, but his mom we don’t know. Who knows about his mom.

In a potential Season 2, will you do a time jump?

Blair: We would need to because I don’t want to do anything in New York. Quinn needs to go away and save her ranch, and we need to see what the implications are for that punch that Davis goads Staten into doing and what that plot between Davis and Staten’s father, the senator, is like. I think we would probably do that because she says, “I’m going to go away for six months.” So the idea right now, although nothing’s set in stone, is that we would do at least a six-month time jump.