Picture this: a boardroom in Midland, Texas, gripped by oil-fueled tension thicker than the humidity outside. The door swings open, and in glides Colm Feore, crisp Tom Ford suit shining under the fluorescent lights, eyes sharp as a legal brief. No, he doesn’t have a sword or a soliloquy (at least, not this time). Instead, he wields a stack of contracts and a pen you’d swear is mightier than Thor’s hammer. Welcome to the world of Landman—and more importantly, welcome to Nathan, oil company attorney extraordinaire, powered by Feore’s signature stage-bred gravitas.
From Quebec Classrooms to Texas Boardrooms
Colm Feore’s journey may read like something out of a highbrow drama, but the man walks the talk. Born in Boston in 1958, then whisked off to Ireland, Feore finally touched down in Ontario, Canada—where his spotlight dreams started taking shape. He sharpened his acting chops at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. And sharpen he did, because by the time he hit Stratford, Ontario, he had that Shakespearean magic humming through his veins.
Stratford’s legendary festival became his second home. But Feore didn’t just show up—he owned the stage. We’re talking Romeo, Hamlet, Richard III, and the eternal silver-nosed swordsman, Cyrano. He racked up thirteen consecutive seasons (yep, you read that right), not only earning standing ovations but also carving out a reputation as one of the sharpest classical actors outside of the West End.
This trailblazing didn’t go unnoticed. Colm packed his trophy shelf with the Gascon-Thomas Award, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and, just to cap it off, got named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019. While the Tony remains elusive—despite what a few overeager headlines claimed—Feore’s stayed unfazed. As he put it himself in his classic, dry way, “Tony’s still in the mail; UPS lost the tracking number.”
From Celluloid to Streaming: The Résumé That Never Quits
Feore didn’t stop at curtain calls and curtain drops. As TV and movies kept scooping up fresh talent, Colm gave them more than they could handle. He lit up the screen as Pierre Trudeau in the 2002 miniseries Trudeau, grabbing a Gemini Award and turning heads in both Hollywood and Ottawa. If you skipped that, maybe you spotted him as Laufey, king of the Frost Giants, in Thor (2011), sleazy Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere in The Borgias, or as the mysterious Sir Reginald Hargreeves, the world’s most dysfunctional “dad” on Netflix’s Umbrella Academy.
Let’s not forget the Genie-winning Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould or his stone-cold roles in Chicago, The Chronicles of Riddick, or Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. The point here is, Colm tends to leave a trail of stellar performances in his wake.
Landing the Landman Gig
Fast forward to November 2024. Feore bags the role of Nathan in Taylor Sheridan’s highly-anticipated Paramount+ powerhouse, Landman. Sheridan, hot off the success of Yellowstone, handed Feore a script peppered with legal jargon and corporate shade—and Feore didn’t blink. He dove right in.
- “You need someone who can swing dialogue like an axe,” Sheridan told a crowd at the TCA Winter 2025 panel.
- Feore didn’t just read lines; he studied. For authenticity, he camped out inside Houston’s Baker Botts, a legal powerhouse, soaking up every deposition and detail. He grilled Texas Railroad Commission attorneys on blow-out preventer regulations. Even his wardrobe did homework—a Vanity Fair set visit in September 2024 noted the bespoke Tom Ford suits “dyed a shade darker than an oil slick.”
Nathan: Oil’s Icy Legal Fixer
Let’s talk about Nathan. He might not wear boots or swing a wrench, but he runs the floor in the Landman universe. Where others wrestle with shale and drilling mud, Nathan manhandles contracts and regulatory nightmares.
Episode by episode, viewers got a taste of his style:
- In the pilot, “Lease or Die Trying,” he snags grazing rights from the Hayes family in a slick move just before seismic crews show up.
- By episode three, Nathan goes toe to toe with the EPA legal team. He uses arcane safety data to stall an injunction, grinning like he’s playing chess four moves ahead.
- In episode six, during a courtroom slugfest with rancher Cole Denton, Nathan cracks open records and exposes prior contamination, flipping the narrative.
- And come the season finale, Nathan is the guy who melds negotiation and strategy, hammering out an $88-million deal while orchestrating the M-Tex and Permian Noble merger.
What do critics say? Rotten Tomatoes laid down a 76% approval score for season one, with one reviewer nailing it—a “smile icy enough to turn a spreadsheet into a weapon.” The Hollywood Reporter added their own flavor: “Every time Feore slides into the conference room, the temperature drops ten degrees.”
Drama, Duel, and Deep-Dive Training
Some actors would let the writers do all the heavy lifting. Not Feore. He brought both research and real-world effort. He spent hours with actual mineral-rights lawyers, thumbed through the Texas Land Code, and kept legal pads from rehearsal handy. He even juggled direct input from field experts, as reported in Variety in December 2024.
Feore’s classical training only sharpened his edge. Onscreen, his cross-exams sometimes have more poetry than violence, blending rhythm and logic in boardroom brawls that would make Hamlet jealous. And the fans love it. “Nathan would feed Logan Roy his own breakfast,” quipped one Redditor on the r/LandmanTV thread.
About That Tony: Clearing Up the Gold Statues
Let’s set the facts straight. No, Colm Feore does not have a Tony, despite a wave of 2024 Broadway buzz. He slayed as King Lear at BAM, but the Tony voters took a raincheck. Instead, Feore racks up honors like the National Arts Centre Award and legacy-level Stratford accolades. Don’t cry for him. Even without the golden hardware, Feore still owns every room he enters, whether it’s Main Street Midland or 44th Street NYC.
Boardroom Gladiators: Nathan vs. Tommy
The real dynamite comes from Feore’s scenes with Billy Bob Thornton (Tommy Norris). Tommy deals with the physical grind; Nathan brings intellectual firepower. When these two collide, sparks fly. The show paints the boardroom as a modern gladiator pit. Who needs a coliseum when you have a twelve-seat oak table and a stack of non-disclosure agreements?
Taylor Sheridan’s world never comes in black and white; it’s always a swirl of grey, and Nathan lives right in that muddled moral middle. He’s the company’s trusted “fixer,” but he never forgets the rules—even when he bends them.
What’s Next Down the Pipeline
Don’t think Landman is running out of steam. Season two charged up to film in August 2025, with locations stretching from Lubbock to Albuquerque. Where’s Nathan in the pecking order? Front and center, especially as the Justice Department opens a new antitrust probe.
— Ana de la Reguera joins the cast as Paula Diaz, U.S. Attorney and Nathan’s budding rival.
— And here’s a cherry: Feore steps behind the camera to direct episode four, a TV debut sure to cause a stir.
— The Landman universe keeps growing, and fans want more Nathan. After all, ScreenRant ranked him third out of all the contenders, adding, “He could headline his own spin-off courtroom dramedy.”
A Toast to the Boardroom Titan
Stage lights dim, boardroom fluorescents flicker on. Colm Feore traded doublets for pinstripes, but the drama? Oh, he brought that with him. Maybe he won’t parade a Tony up Fifth Avenue this year, but he’s already claimed something even harder: The undivided attention of an audience that loves watching a master at work. So next time you see Nathan coolly adjust his cufflinks before tossing a regulatory grenade, remember—this is a role built on decades of skill, research, and a low boiling point for anything mediocre.
Stay tuned, because as long as there’s steam in the Permian and loopholes in the statutes, there’ll be another sharp Feore stare waiting to knock a few titans off balance. The boardroom never had it so good.
