“The ranch is like another character, so we really needed to lean in to the Western in that sense,” reveals Jennifer Getzinger about Amazon’s genre-bending “Outer Range.” “But then, of course, whenever we did go to the more sci-fi elements, that’s where we could use a different type of visual language,” she proclaims, adding for our recent Q&A on the show’s distinct look and feel, “we actually put a lot more movement in it, it was a lot more dreamy I would say, or something where you’re just not sure what’s real.” We talked with Getzinger as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2022 Emmy Awards contenders. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
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Created by Brian Watkins, the neo-Western sci-fi drama stars Oscar nominee Josh Brolin as Royal Abbott, a tough as nails Wyoming rancher who discovers a mysterious otherworldly black void on his land that appears to be some kind of time-travelling portal. The series’s ensemble cast features three-time Emmy nominee Lili Taylor, Imogen Poots, Tom Pelphrey, Tamara Podemski, Lewis Pullman, Noah Reid, Shaun Sipos, with Will Patton co-starring as the patriarch of the rival Tillerson family who own the ranch next door and who are after Abbott’s ranch and that mysterious all-powerful black void.
“Outer Range” is a dazzling combination of modern-day Western and a heart-pounding thriller full of family drama, bloody rivalries and even time travel. It boasts all the bells and whistles that audiences have come to expect from the Wild West — sweeping vistas, unforgiving landscapes, wildlife and no-nonsense cowboys and ranchers — within an often confounding sci-fi mystery, in the vein of other TV hits like “Lost” and “Dark” crossed with “Yellowstone” and “Justified.”
Getzinger agrees that while the show might defy classification at first blush, the team of writers and directors behind the scenes led by Watkins definitely wanted to lean in to its Western roots as a way to ground the series in reality, before introducing the show’s supernatural elements. “Brian Watkins really had a lot of amazing references to all kinds of Westerns and Coen Brothers and just all kinds of interesting things that he was referencing that we ended up using a lot of; the kind of language in how we shot the episodes,” the director explains. “The Western element was definitely very important, especially because I did early episodes and I think we really wanted to show that landscape, show this world, show the ranch, show their lives,” she says.
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