‘1883’: LaMonica Garrett Reveals What Brought Him to Tears While Making the ‘Yellowstone’ Prequel

For LaMonica Garrett, bringing a Black cowboy to life in the new Yellowstone prequel 1883 was an emotional experience. The actor has earned early praise for his portrayal of Thomas, a Black cowboy and Civil War veteran working to accompany a group of immigrants along the Oregon Trail. Garrett told Deadline ahead of the premiere of the Paramount+ show that it’s been an “emotional” performance to take on due to the lack of Black characters in older Westerns. 

“I get emotional about it,” he said. “My background, my parents’ background…my dad, his family, a lot of brothers and sisters, they were sharecroppers in Mississippi. My mom, she was raised by a woman who was born a slave, her grandmother, and it’s significant. The opening credits of a show weren’t usually there for Black actors.”

“So, having my name and your face in the beginning as one of the stars of a Western, in that tintype, black and white, old…I saw that at the theater a couple weeks ago in Amarillo,” he continued. When the opening credits were first shown to the cast and crew, Garrett said he initially was resistant, thinking it could get in his head and affect his performance. 

“But as I saw it, and my face popped up…I haven’t cried that much since my friend’s funeral,four years ago,” he shared. “It affected me. I don’t know where it came from. Knowing the history of it, and doing my research, and just knowing what I saw and what I didn’t see growing up, it all came to that moment right there on that screen.”

Filming an authentic Western was no easy task, however, as Garrett acknowledged there’s a reason there aren’t many authentic portrayals of the journey west nowadays. “Everything is against you when you’re outside in these conditions, 98% of the time,” he explained. “We’re not in studios. It’s not five wagons that, you know, they CGI into 25. They’re traveling with us. Everywhere we go, we exhaust all the resources of whatever town we’re in. We have like 400 cast and crew. We’re living on a ranch, no cable, no cell service, no wifi. But it’s beautiful, and I think that’s why, as hard as it is over here, it translates to the film, and that’s why people love seeing these kind of pieces.”