Cowboy Camp is not for the faint of heart, and it’s like a rite of passage for Yellowstone casts. Along with preparing them for the scenes involving horses and cowboying in the shows, it also helps the ensemble bond. That became clear when I spoke to Dutton Ranch’s Natalie Alyn Lind as she revealed one exercise from this training camp that left everyone “cheering and going crazy.”
Again, Cowboy Camp is intense, and it's different from show to show, as the Marshals’ cast has to learn different skills than Dutton Ranch’s ensemble. For the new actors on Rip and Beth's show, they trained for a week before they began filming. According to Lind, who plays Oreana Jackson, there’s “no better way to put yourself in a character’s mindset” than through this training.
It also really helped her ground herself in Yellowstone’s world. Along with that, it got the ensemble all excited about both the work and each other, as she told me:
Going into cowboy camp, I was the only girl there, so I was the only girl castmate, and that was definitely intimidating. But they just felt like a bunch of big brothers. It was funny because during Cowboy Camp, everybody would do something, like we'd have to go and cut, take eggs on spoons, and you have to maintain a trot while holding the egg up. And everybody would do something. You'd go and do it.
While she didn’t specify which guys she was working with, I would guess it had to include actors like Jai Courtney (Rob-Will), Juan Pablo Raba (Joaquin), J.R. Villarreal (Azul) and Marc Menchaca (Zachariah), all of whom made their Yellowstone debuts in this spinoff that aired on the 2026 TV schedule. It’s possible Cole Hauser and Finn Little were there too; however, they had quite a bit of cowboying under their belts prior to this show, so I wouldn't bet on it.
Based on Natalie Alyn Lind’s comments, we do know she was the only woman in this training, meaning the other two actresses in the show’s regular cast, Annette Bening and Kelly Reilly, were not riding alongside her.
Anyway, to get back to the camp and what they did there, this egg exercise sounds like it really had the cast hyped. Lind told me her castmates would be constantly cheering her on as she did harder and harder things. Recalling what that felt like, the actress said:
But when I would do it, because it was just a bunch of big brothers, everybody would just start cheering and going crazy. And then towards the end, I was starting to get a little bit embarrassed. I would start getting flushed and getting really scared if I couldn't do something. But it was just so supportive.
Clearly, this makes Cowboy Camp sound like something out of her comfort zone, but she survived. As Lind also said, it prepared her for her part in a great way, and while it sounds a bit overwhelming to have all the guys cheering for you, she did it. And it kind of sounds like she crushed it.
All this hard work has paid off big time, too. Dutton Ranch has been renewed for Season 2, and almost everyone will be back in the saddle quite soon. Personally, I’m almost as excited to hear more training and BTS stories as I am to see the show itself. However, for now, you can see this ensemble roping and riding by streaming the Yellowstone spinoff with a Paramount+ subscription.
