‘We Were Both Pretty Beat Up:’ Outer Range’s Noah Reid And Shaun Sipos Break Down The Show’s Most Intense Death Scene And How They Created It
MAJOR spoilers for Outer Range Season 2 are ahead. If you aren’t caught up on the show that dethroned Fallout on its streamer’s Top 10, you can stream it right now with an Amazon Prime subscription.
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Arguably, one of the most intense scenes in Season 2 of Outer Range – which recently premiered on the 2024 TV schedule – is the death of Billy Tillerson. After spending the season bedridden and healing, once he’s able to stand, he gets into a serious fight with his brother Luke that leads to his death. It’s intense, it’s violent and it’s visceral, and while talking to Noah Reid and Shaun Sipos about their characters' moment, they broke down what it was like to create it.
In Episode 6 of Outer Range’s sophomore season, which was directed by the show’s star Josh Brolin, Reid and Sipos, who play Billy and Luke, respectively, get into a massive fight over the time travel hole, the mineral that comes from it and Autumn. It ends with Luke hitting Billy in the head with a fire poker, and that leads to his brother’s death.
While speaking to CinemaBlend about this pivotal scene, Noah Reid broke down how they prepped for it, and the greater meaning behind it, telling me:
I would say that that's a scene that we workshopped for quite some time with [showrunner Charles Murray], and then with Josh [Brolin]. And together, we kind of, we wanted to make sure that that scene felt like the appropriate culmination of these characters being at a total impasse, and that something's got to give, and that really, there can only be one.
Shaun Sipos agreed with his co-star. While he was candid about a direction Brolin gave him that was uncomfortable, he also explained why it worked and the collaborative nature on set. All of that helped them pull off this intense climax in Outer Range. The Luke actor said:
Yeah, I feel like this season, there was a lot of support for us interpreting the material and adding things that may not have been in black and white on the page. And I think that really was a benefit to the second season here. Because we've sat with these characters for so long, and then Noah and I are really close in real life. And we were able to sit down and really explore the scenes and what it meant and how we thought the best way to go about it was to make it the most impactful.
Reid touched on this idea earlier too. He said that Billy and Luke were at a breaking point and that they were “not going to be able to coexist.” They both had conflicting feelings about Autumn and the mineral, and that made it so they couldn’t be civil with each other. The “trust and collaborative spirit,” helped the actors play out this game-changing point, and it made it so they could give it their all on the day.
In the end, they were “both pretty beat up” by the scene, as the Schitt’s Creek star explained:
I think we were both pretty beat up by the end of the day. I don't think Shaun could talk anymore. It it was pretty cool.
Sipos then confirmed that he could not talk after the day was over. If you watch the scene, that makes sense. They were beating each other up, Luke was saying Billy’s name over and over again, and all around it seemed like a physically and emotionally draining day.
However, it all paid off, as both men tipped their caps to Josh Brolin and his direction as well as the freedom they had to interpret the story and share their input on their characters' actions.
To go back and witness the intense scene in Outer Range’s second season, you can stream Episode 6, along with all the other episodes in the series, on Amazon Prime. Meanwhile, stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more coverage about the sci-fi Western and what it took to make it.
