‘She’s a woman coming into her own power and confidence, and really able to navigate what’s healthy for her right now.” Minka Kelly’s telling me about her character on the new Netflix series “Ransom Canyon,” but might as well be talking about herself. The brunette actor who made a splash as Lyla Garrity in “Friday Night Lights” in the early aughts is back in a starring role in the streamer’s soapy, sexy Western. And she’s bringing decades of personal growth with her.
“I feel so much more comfortable in my skin, as a woman, as a person, as an actor,” says Kelly, joining Alexa via Zoom from her home in LA. “And I think all of that sort of informs how I feel when I’m on set. It’s the best experience I’ve had in my career.”
“Ransom Canyon,” based on the series of novels by Jodi Thomas, takes place in a dusty Texas town where several generations of small-towners are grappling with challenges: Staten Kirkland (Josh Duhamel) is a tragedy-struck rancher fighting off an oil company’s pipeline grab for his land; Kelly plays Quinn O’Grady, a concert pianist who’s moved back to her hometown partly to help Staten through his grief. Complicating things is a lifelong mutual crush between the two, naturally. (We did say soapy and sexy!) Meanwhile, cheerleader Lauren (Lizzy Greene) navigates a relationship with her football player boyfriend (Andrew Liner) while nursing a clandestine entanglement with a boy (Garrett Wareing) from the wrong side of the tracks. And an elder statesman rancher (James Brolin) hires a shady new ranch hand (Jack Schumacher) who seems poised to kick up trouble.
Quinn is the most beautiful woman in town — she’s played by (former Alexa cover star) Kelly, after all — and spends the series swathed in a succession of gorgeous Western outfits, from cowboy hats and quilted coats to flowy prairie dresses. Quinn also happens to have a lavender farm. “I was like, she does, what? Lavender? Yeah, lavender soap,” says Kelly, laughing. “Trust me, I was excited!”
“Ransom Canyon” has its finger very much on the pulse of what viewers want. And what they want is a “Yellowstone”-“Friday Night Lights” escapist mashup. At one point, Quinn and Staten go to the high school football game, where Kelly’s character watches contentedly as latter-day Lyla Garritys kick and twirl on the field.
Want more proof of the connective tissue between the two shows? “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan was Kelly’s acting coach, back when she was prepping for her “Friday Night Lights” audition. “I was brand new,” Kelly says with a laugh. “I had never tested for a show or a pilot. And he was like, ‘Alright, for this one, you’re gonna go in, it’s gonna be 10 people just looking at you, and it’s gonna be intimidating. Don’t put your hands in your pockets if you’re nervous.’ He really was a huge help in getting ‘Friday Night Lights’ for me.”
Oftentimes, a Western has a high dose of machismo baked in, but given the female leadership behind “Ransom,” things are a little different, Kelly says. Showrunner April Blair previously wrote for “Wednesday” and “You,” while director Amanda Marsalis (“Ozark,” “The Pitt”) helmed the first two and last two episodes in the 10-episode run. The female perspective on Western tropes is palpable. When, for example, Staten shows up at Quinn’s to help fix her broken tractor, it’s ultimately Quinn who does the fixing herself. For Kelly, more important than the gender-balanced storylines was an implicit sense of trust and support that, she says, she has not always found on sets. “My bosses are women, so they’re very supportive of boundaries,” says Kelly, who has lately become a huge boundaries fan. “That’s one thing I had conversations with some of the girls [on the show] about, like, it’s okay to advocate for yourself and to ask for what you need!”
For the 44-year-old Kelly, finding a safe space in which to work has been essential for continuing the journey of self-advocacy and discovery she’s been on for years, one which included publishing her acclaimed memoir, “Tell Me Everything,” two years ago. In it, Kelly unpacks a tumultuous upbringing by her single mother, Maureen “Mo” Dumont Kelly, who worked as an exotic dancer and struggled with substance abuse (she died in 2008 of colon cancer). Kelly’s father is rock guitarist Rick Dufay, a former Aerosmith member, who was largely absent from her childhood, during which she experienced physical abuse by one of her mother’s boyfriends. In her young adulthood, Kelly dated an abusive man who pressured her into making a sex tape. She eventually found escape in a modeling career, which led to bit parts in TV and film before her big “Friday Night Lights” break.
Much of Kelly’s upbringing was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so when she learned that “Ransom Canyon” would be shooting there, a certain amount of psychological preparation was required. “I’d been back a few times, throughout my life, and it was always very emotional,” she says. “The idea of living there for six months made me a little nervous.” But she found this return cathartic. “Seeing it as the more healed version of myself, I could appreciate all the beauty of it,” she says. “And my gosh, the food. The hatch green chile is so unique to New Mexico. It took me right back to the best parts of my childhood.”
But Kelly keeps her mom close no matter where she is. “She’s very present with me every day,” she says. “I keep her name alive in a lot of ways. We go to the coffee shop down the street every day, and they know to put my order under the name Mo.”
The other half of that “we” is boyfriend Dan Reynolds, lead singer of Imagine Dragons. They’ve been together since 2022, and Kelly extols the virtues of getting together with the right someone when you’re a little older and wiser. “There is something that happens when you turn 40. You sort of level up a little bit,” she says. “I’m truly in the best place I’ve ever been in my life, the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in. I wasn’t ready for him until now; I had to learn all the lessons, be able to advocate for myself, have the boundaries, not be codependent. Sometimes when I describe my old self to him, or things that I tolerated, he’s like, ‘Huh, you would never put up with that.’ It feels like I’ve graduated, in a sense.”
She’s also evolved into a sartorial sense that makes her deeply comfortable. “What makes an outfit feel good to me, first and foremost, is that I don’t have to be adjusting or tugging at it all day,” she says, rising from her chair to show off the swingy brown sweater she’s wearing. “It’s funny, I can hear my friends being like, ‘you’re always hiding your body!’” she says. But for Kelly, flowy is fashionable. “I love Black Crane,” she says. “They have the most beautiful fabrics. I like things to feel elegant and soft and flowy. Every once in a while, I’ll wear something a little more form-fitting, but, but I end up changing out of it pretty much as soon as I get home.”
Our shoot with Kelly at Hudson Yards put the “Ransom” star in a series of looks she describes as “boho Western — really fun.” Kelly especially loved the all-white Ralph Lauren skirt and blouse topped with a leather jacket. “It just felt like such a party,” she says of the shoot. “Especially since it was the last day of the press tour!”
She’s excited to have some downtime with Reynolds now — and to keep practicing the music she learned for the show. “Fortunately,” she says, “I happen to live with a masterful classical pianist. So he was really helpful in teaching me the songs. I would memorize them and just play them over and over and over again.” She got a unique thrill out of learning a skill she’d never known she’d be capable of. “You’re like, ‘I can’t do this.’ And you just keep trying, and then eventually you’re like, ‘Holy shit, I’m doing it!’ It’s the best. It also helps to want to impress your boyfriend. And your showrunner.”
In addition to “Ransom Canyon,” Kelly’s also starring in an upcoming Netflix rom-com, “Champagne Problems,” which let her spend some time in her favorite place on Earth. “A romantic comedy is something I always wanted to do, and then on top of that, it shot in Paris,” she says.
I ask if she’s planning a follow-up to her memoir. “The thing that made me able to write that book was the amount of time I had away from the subject matter, so I wasn’t still emotionally sensitive to a lot of those stories,” she says. “I’d processed so much over 10 years or so. If I write another one, I want to do it that way again.
“I’m going through a really beautiful chapter in my life right now that I know I’ll want to write about one day,” she says. “I’m taking a lot of notes right now.”
Photographer: Victoria Will; Editor: Serena French; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Photo Editor: Jessica Hober; Talent Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Hair: Mark Townsend at Forward Artists; Makeup: Kristofer Buckle at Opus Beauty; Manicure: Kylie Kwok for Tracey Mattingly using Essie; Producer: Savannah Shipman; 1st Lighting Assistant: Christian Larsen; 2nd Lighting Assistant: Vita Burn; Digital Tech: Dustin Betterly; Prop Stylist: Linden Elstran; Prop Stylist Assistant: Seamus Creighton, Fashion Assistants: Jena Beck, Meghan Powers
