'Big Sky': How Reba McEntire's Boyfriend Rex Lin Helped Convince Her to Play 'Dark' Character Sunny Barnes

By Stephen Andrew

Reba McEntire is playing a "dark" character in the new season of ABC's Big Sky, and it turns out that it was her boyfriend Rex Linn who helped convince her to take the role. Speaking to EW about how McEntire's part as backcountry outfitter head-honcho Sunny Barnes came about, Big Sky showrunner Elwood Reid confessed, "Reba is someone who a lot of us grew up with. I had written a character, and I described her as 'Reba McEntire, circa Tremors.' I always loved that character."

He continued, "So I called her and pitched her the character. We all have this image of Reba McEntire as being America's sweetheart, country music star. I was very nervous about pitching her this character that goes into some dark places." Reid then shared how McEntire's boyfriend, who is also an actor, urged her to take the role. "I was pitching her, and I heard this voice in the background, 'Yes, hell yes, you're doing this,' and I saw Rex Linn, who's also her boyfriend. He said, 'I've been telling her she needs to do this for 10 years.' And then Reba stopped and said, 'Will you hire my boyfriend Rex?' I know Rex from Better Call Saul and lots of stuff that he's worked on. And I was like, 'Well, alright, that's two for one.'"

Reid went on to say, "Working with someone like Reba, you're really nervous. She put me at ease within two seconds. She's a really good person and a hard worker – first to set, knows all of her lines, doesn't leave set, talks to everybody, sings, cracks jokes."

When it comes to whether or not Sunny is "friend or foe," Reid says she's "a little bit of both." He explained, "What I mean by darker, if you know the mythology of the show, we're not talking Rick Legarski (John Carroll Lynch), Ronald (Brian Geraghty) darkness. The way I pitched her character is there's a lot of this in Reba herself. She's a mama bear that you don't cross."

He added, "What's going to be fun is seeing how far she'll go to defend her family. So she's got a little bit of an edge to her, and she's got some darkness to her. But if you squint and you look through the lens of Big Sky, you can justify some of the stuff she's going to be doing. It's Reba; she has that smile and you can't help but like her, even when she's doing some pretty nasty things." Big Sky: Deadly Trails, the show's third season, premieres Wednesday, Sept. 21 at 10 p.m. ET, on ABC.

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