Yellowstone’s second episode of Season 3 provided fans with a lot of emotional payoffs besides revealing Roarke’s real agenda. In it, Beth and Rip shared an especially sweet scene wherein Beth woke up to find a beautiful breakfast that Rip had made for her. After taking it all in, Kelly Reilly’s fiery character found herself deeply touched.
While Beth and Rip have shared a lot of moving scenes together on Yellowstone, this one stood out because Beth was particularly vulnerable in it. Discussing Season 3 with Kelly Reilly, I just had to ask about what was going through Beth’s mind during the poignant moment.
At first, Kelly Reilly said that she did not want to “spell it out for people” before deciding to take a deep dive into her perspective on the emotionally climactic scene. Asked what why Beth got choked up by Rip’s sweet skills in the kitchen, Reilly told me:
It’s such an ambiguous thing as most things are with big feelings. I don’t think she [Beth] knows why in that moment. I tell you what I think. I think there’s something about the kindness of the gesture. The simplicity of his love that is so unwavering. That this man has woken up early to make her breakfast. It’s early in the morning. She’s not dressed. She’s in her most sort of childlike, vulnerable sort of side that we’ve ever seen her, and there’s something, I think, that touches her when he just wants to love that and take that in. And he just stares at her as she’s eating and there’s something about her being self-conscious.I don’t think I’ve seen Beth be self-conscious ever in any episode, you know? And she allows him to see that in her, and she allows him to feel that. I think it moves her. I think it allows her to feel her own heart for a second and without getting too sentimental about it because that’s not her. I think there’s just something so tender about it. So tender about him. She loves him.
How poignant is that? Beth felt her own heart. Who better than Rip to bring about this emotionally triumphant moment? There is no one else who has the same impact on Beth as Rip, and the two seem to finally be settling into a definitive relationship in Season 3. Yellowstone has been building the pair’s chemistry for two seasons.
Kelly Reilly played the moment beautifully as did Cole Hauser, who quietly reassured Beth. How Rip is with Beth is one of the reasons he is such a fan-favorite, in my opinion. Speaking to Hauser about Season 3, I asked for his insight on Beth’s reaction to Rip’s emotionally charged breakfast, to which Hauser said:
The way that I read it and I think the way that Kelly [Reilly] played it was that she just loves him so much. Here’s this moment that I guess they’ve both kind of dreamt of for a very long time, which is they have their own home. It smells of bacon in the kitchen, and she gets up, and she comes downstairs, and there’s coffee, and breakfast is ready. It’s just that first kind of ‘Wow, this is real. This is happening. We’re actually truly falling for each other.’ In the right way.
Beth and Rip seem to actually be in a good place as Yellowstone Season 3 gets underway. I hope it stays that way. Plus, I like seeing this side of Beth, which as a viewer, you can feel brimming beneath the surface. Kelly Reilly has usually had to play Beth in a more zealous mode, though.
So, it was moving to see her be so touched by Rip’s incredible cooking skills and his sheer thoughtfulness. I am hoping that Beth and Rip get married before the end of Season 3. They have been circling each other long before the hit show started, ever since they were teens. I am ready for them to continue beginning a life together on Yellowstone.
Find out if there are more emotional scenes between Beth and Rip as new episodes of Yellowstone air throughout this summer on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Paramount Network. If you want to catch up on the moments that Beth and Rip have shared so far, you can watch their romance when it becomes available on NBCUniversal’s upcoming streamer, Peacock. It launches nationally on July 15.
