Cole Hauser Explains Why He “Was Sweating It Out” While Filming “Dutton Ranch”
on Jun 08, 2026
Everything’s bigger…and hotter…in Texas. That’s something Cole Hauser now knows from experience after filming Dutton Ranch.
Dutton Ranch is a new Yellowstone spin-off centered on Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Hauser). In the first episode, Beth and Rip are forced to leave their home in Montana and start a new life in Texas.
The cast and crew filmed the series in “The Lone Star State.” They got a crash course in Texas heat, with director Christina Alexandra Voros telling PEOPLE that temperatures peaked at around 106 degrees Fahrenheit during their first week on set.
The heat was so brutal that Hauser struggled to maintain his weight.
“I was trying to keep weight on,” Hauser said during an interview with PEOPLE at the Dutton Ranch premiere. “I mean, I usually put on about 25 pounds [to play Rip], but it was hard to keep it on.”
He joked, “I was sweating it out.”
RELATED: COLE HAUSER REVEALS THE REAL REASON FOR “DUTTON RANCH” NAME
Besides the unbearable heat, the cast and crew of Dutton Ranch dealt with other extreme weather conditions.
“We finished the show in March and we got shut down for four days because of an ice storm,” Voros said. “So we had every weather emoji over the course of shooting this. Our crew is really intrepid. Our cast is really intrepid. We got through all of it, but it wasn’t easy.”
Cole Hauser & The Cast Of Dutton Ranch Also Had To Deal With Thousands Of Snakes On Set
As if scorching heat and spring ice storms weren’t enough of a challenge, Cole Hauser and everyone else on Dutton Ranch faced another formidable foe while filming.
During a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Hauser and his co-star Kelly Reilly talked about the otherworldly number of rattlesnakes they encountered on set.
“[In] eight months, 3,400 rattlesnakes [were] caught,” Hauser shared.
The snakes were so prevalent that they needed to have professional snake wranglers on set at all times.
“We have snake wranglers, like literally six of them on set at any point, and I’m in these stiletto heels running through fields,” Reilly said. “And I’m just praying, like, please let them have gotten all the snakes in this vicinity. And they would just pick them up and put them somewhere far away from us.“
Once, there were “40 or 50 rattlesnakes” at the place where they wanted to film, so they “got turned away” from the location for the night.
Hear Hauser and Reilly speak more about their experiences with snakes while filming Dutton Ranch in the video below.
