Before Piper Perabo shot her first episode of Yellowstone, she knew that her days could be numbered. "If you misstep with the Duttons, Rip takes you to the train station and throws you over that cliff," Perabo says, with a laugh. "So I got to be real careful what I say." That means no teasers on who lives or dies following the Season Three finale (though... we might have a guess... keeping reading). Keeping the secrets at bay is even harder considering that her husband, Stephen Kay, is a director and producer on the series.

What she can say is that her character, Summer Higgins, is an activist bound to be a thorn in the side of the Dutton family in the new season. An environmentalist with an axe to grind, she'll be going toe to toe with the Montana family, and for anyone familiar with Yellowstone, they know that typically doesn't end well. But Perabo, maybe more than anyone else on Yellowstone, gets the opportunity to tap into her own interests a bit.

Since her star-making days filming Coyote Ugly, Perabo has become an outspoken activist, arrested for protesting the appointment of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh and alongside Jane Fonda, while protesting at "Fire Drill Fridays." So perhaps Perabo is a match for the Duttons, after all. Ahead of the Season Four premiere, Perabo hopped on the phone to discuss the upcoming season, the excitement of being on cable's biggest series, and even a few anecdotes from those Coyote Ugly days.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.


ESQ: We know that you play an environmental activist. Can you tease out anything else that's going on?

Perabo: Well, I can tell you this. I was already a huge fan of the show. This is the first time I've ever been on a show that I was a fan of, which is pretty weird. I guess it shouldn't be weird because I'm an actor, but it was still amazing to have watched the show and I know all the rooms and locations and where the bunk house is and the big house and the fields and horses. I'm kind of intimately aware of all the turns of the character. Sometimes when you jump into a show you have to go back and like watch everything from the beginning so that you know the history and what you would know and what your character wouldn't know. But I knew this world so well. And so I was, even though my a character is an antagonist, I was just excited to get into the world of Yellowstone.

I've never been one to be drawn into the Western genre but there's something so expansive and overwhelming about the show that I immediately became a fan. Do you think that we're kind of in this phase of rethinking the Western genre and the way we write about it?

During the pandemic, when everybody was—especially at the beginning of pandemic—when everyone was in their house and you're just with your family in the space where you live or just of the people you live with in these very familiar spaces. When you turn on Yellowstone all of a sudden there's this expansive American landscape, which is so iconic in the American Western, but to see a man ride out across fields and over mountains just has this breadth and gives you a sense of breath that I think was so needed when people were in lockdown. I don't know if it's a retelling or a new way of looking at the American Western or we just need the American Western again. That sense of openness and family and beauty and being outdoors. I think with all that the world has been through recently, the Western is a kind of genre that makes us feel better.

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Now as a fan of the show, you know that antagonists tend to not fare well on Yellowstone.

It's very terrifying to come in on the wrong side of the Duttons. That was the choice though, it was like you cannot do it or you can come in on the wrong side of the Duttons, but I was like "Well, I just want to get it there. So let me try my chances."

As a fan you have the bonus of kind of knowing the lingo and the information and the plot, but what is it like gelling with this group of actors that work so closely with each other?

I think the weirdest thing is I had worked with Cole Hauser. He and I did two jobs together in the past. But Kelly, for instance, who plays Beth, is English. So it's so funny to see Beth Dutton walk into a field and be speaking with an English accent. So strange. She's so believable as Beth Dutton that in a rehearsal when she asks a question or is talking about how she's going to block something, then she's Kelly Riley and she's this very beautiful, refined English actress. So that was sort of surprising. Also to work with Kevin Costner is so... It takes a minute, it takes a takes a day or so to kind of get over the fact that there's a real bona fide movie star standing there and that's really what he is.

Do you find yourself squaring off against the Duttons in particular in this coming season?

I…

I know that’s a tough question!

I can't say... I'll say this: my interests are a direct conflict with the Duttons' interests. But I can't say who I square off with.

No actor is their character, but this character does seem to fit pretty well with your own interests in a lot of ways. I know that you've really gone to the mat with your own activism. Did you find yourself drawing on that for this role?

My husband, Steven Kay, is one of the executive producers of the show. He and I had dinner with Taylor Sheridan and his wife, Nicole, at the time when I had just been arrested for protesting Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and it came up over dinner. And Taylor was like "Wait, you did what now?". And he was really interested in the story of civil disobedience and the sort of process of putting your body on the line for a cause that you care about. And we ended up talking about it for a long time after dinner and then the next season came around and he called with this part. And so I feel like it came out of that discussion that we had and then he sort of put it through his Yellowstone brain and made a character that makes sense in the Yellowstone world. But it was fun after really committing to activism in my own life to try and combine that with my other love, which is acting.

I have to imagine meeting up with Cole Hauser again on the set has to be one of those moments that are really exciting, you know, when you have a career that spans a couple of decades, being able to revisit these other actors you’ve that met along the way.

It's so funny because Cole is so... I mean in real life, Cole is very cool. He's like tough and cool. When he's playing Rip, he has that black hair and that black beard and he's so big. And obviously he dressed like a cowboy, which is not how Cole dresses in his real life. But I don't know… when he walks up to you, especially because I'm a fan, it's weird because like there's Rip, but then there's kind of Cole smiling behind the eyes.

Before I let you go, I'd be a bit remiss... In the past few years, we've done a few appreciation posts of films past of all the things I’ve worked on, people went especially wild about a piece on Coyote Ugly.

Oh thanks! I can tell how old a person is by what movie they know me from. You know what I mean? So if you come up to me and you're like Cheaper by the Dozen, I'm like "Uh huh, so you're like this age or younger" and if you say Coyote Ugly then I know you're this age or older. I don't know if it's because Coyote Ugly is a little bit of a Cinderella story. They leave their hometowns to go in search of their dream and it's not always to be a singer songwriter in New York. But that movie really is about having the guts to move out of your small town and go chase down what you want to do with your life. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. So I don't know. I'm glad when people still like it. Because I think that's still a true thing that people are chasing down.

I remember when we shot, we shot a lot of the movie downtown in the meat packing district actually, because I'm in like stilettos—like pony skin boots, and a lot of Dulce & Gabbana pony skin, stiletto boots that were like more expensive than any shoe I ever owned. So I was so careful when I was walking around, but it's really hard in the meat packing, because it's cobble stones. And that was still when the meat packing had butchers in it.

So they would wash out the butcher shops or the slaughter rooms into the street at night. And when we were filming, we'd be filming till three, four, five in the morning. So some, it was getting cold, it was the fall. And I remember one night and I was in those boots and I thought that the puddle in the street was ice. So I tried to step on it to cross it, but it was actually just congealed fat. Yeah. It was a much more innocent time when that's the most dangerous thing going on in downtown New York, you're probably okay.