‘Yellowstone’ Star Piper Perabo Says Summer Higgins Is ‘Turning up the Heat’ With John Dutton in Season 5
Yellowstone's upcoming Season 5 just got a little steamier. Actor Piper Perabo, who plays activist Summer Higgins on the runaway hit modern Western, says her character and Dutton patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) are "turning up the heat" in the show's upcoming season.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly during the People and Entertainment Weekly Red Carpet Live: 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards pre-show, Perabo hinted that the show's upcoming season will see her character's relationship with John Dutton deepen.
"The love story is kicking into gear on Yellowstone. I know a lot of people watch it for the cowboys and the ranch, but I watch it for the love story," Perabo said. "We're turning up the heat. It's been a hard couple of years, let's turn up the heat for a minute."
Perabo joined the show beginning in Episode 5 of Season 4, portraying the role of Higgins, an activist who organizes a protest of what she terms "the existence of a state-sponsored police force that protects industrialized animal farming and the mass murder of millions of animals every year."
Her character was thrown into the deep end immediately; Perabo's first scene begins with her kneeling in protest and ending up in a confrontation with authorities that results in guns drawn before she's subject to arrest. From there, John Dutton decides to bail her out, and the two end up spending the night together, with Higgins going on to become a major storyline in Season 4.
"It was so crazy ... I was like, 'Okay, this is a lot for Day One,'" Perabo told Taste of Country with a laugh before her debut on Yellowstone. "But it was exciting."
"It was also a little intimidating," she admitted. "My first day with Kevin ... he's a real movie star, and so when you do a scene with somebody like that, you have this whole history of film that you see. You know, Bull Durham and Dances With Wolves and Field of Dreams. Just so many films that are kind of in your mind the first moment you see him. It's a little confusing. But he's such a good actor, and he's directed so many films that you get down to the work really quickly, because he's so calm and steady."