Beth Dutton From Yellowstone's Voice Is Very Different In Real Life

If you're a fan of Paramount's modern-day Western drama "Yellowstone," you're no doubt familiar with actress Kelly Reilly's acclaimed portrayal of Beth Dutton, the cold-blooded daughter of Dutton Ranch patriarch John Dutton III (Kevin Costner). However, in addition to being absolutely stunning in real life, Reilly is actually quite different from the character she spent six years embodying. For starters, Beth Dutton was raised as the heiress to a wealthy family of ranchers in Montana, while Kelly Reilly came from humble beginnings across the pond, growing up just outside of London. Her father was a police officer and her mother was reportedly a receptionist at a hospital. As you might expect, this also means that Reilly's real-life voice is very different from the one she put on to play Beth.

On "Yellowstone," Beth speaks with a fairly neutral American accent, with just a small but noticeable hint of Montana drawl. But when the cameras aren't rolling, Reilly's British accent is thick and unmistakable — something that caught a lot of people off guard when the actress appeared on "The Drew Barrymore Show" in 2024. In fact, the comment section on the Barrymore's YouTube channel offers a glimpse at just how many people she had fooled. "I would have never guessed that she had an English accent ... Never and I've seen her in a lot of movies and she's just amazing," one user commented. This phenomenon apparently even extended to Reilly's own countrymen. "I am British, and I had no idea that she was a Brit just goes to show how much of an amazing actress she is," another commenter wrote.

Funnily enough, "Yellowstone" fans on the internet weren't the only ones who had no idea the actress behind Beth Dutton was actually British at first. Apparently, she even had some of her fellow cast members fooled when the show first started filming prior to its 2018 debut. During an appearance on "The Glenn Beck Podcast" in 2024, Reilly's "Yellowstone" co-star Forrie J. Smith confirmed the "Sherlock Holmes" alum only used her American accent during their first week or so on set — and that he had no idea it was fake. "Yeah, I was just ... I didn't know [she was British] either the first couple weeks," Smith confessed.

Smith also recalled Reilly working with her dialect coach, noting that — as far as he could tell — she didn't struggle keeping the accent on until it came time to film the show's final season. Elsewhere in the conversation, Smith further highlighted just how different Reilly was from the often-ruthless Beth, saying his co-star was "just a sweetheart in real life." 

Speaking of her dialect coach, "Yellowstone" star Kelly Reilly discussed how exactly she developed her accent for Beth Dutton during her aforementioned appearance on "The Drew Barrymore Show" in 2024. As we previously mentioned, Beth's voice is rather nuanced — being fairly neutral with just a dash of that Montana influence. According to Reilly, this was very intentional, as she didn't feel that a stereotypical accent would suit Beth particularly well.

"We were really going for a Montana accent," Reilly told Barrymore, adding, "But [Beth is] educated, she's from a very, very wealthy, you know, ranching family. ... She's not — I wasn't gonna go, like, you know, 'Howdy, ma'am.' ... It wasn't that for me." Still, Reilly says she worked very closely with her longtime dialect coach Jessica Drake to make sure her Montana dialect was as authentic as possible. Reilly and Drake have actually developed numerous American accents for the former's various stateside acting gigs.

But as Reilly told Barrymore, there were other things to consider when it came to Beth beyond where the Dutton heiress was from. "For Beth, it was more about the voice," Reilly explained. "She smokes a little bit, she drinks a lot of bourbon ... she comes from here," the actress continued, gesturing towards her lower torso. Finally, Reilly confessed that she actually somewhat mimicked co-star Kevin Costner, who she says spoke with a lower voice than normal while playing Beth's father John Dutton.

Kelly Reilly and her dialogue coach clearly put a lot of work into getting Beth Dutton's voice right. But did it pay off from the audience's perspective? Well, while there were certainly some detractors on "Yellowstone" fan forums, most seemed to agree with the consensus that the British-born Reilly did a good job at convincingly playing a woman from the mountains of the western United States.

One user on a "Yellowstone" subreddit opined that Reilly's American accent in the show's first season "sounded uncomfortable. Sounded foreign, almost forced." However, there was some pushback from folks in the comment section, with someone else writing, "I don't find her accent awkward. If I hadn't known she wasn't from the US, I would have never guessed." Other users in the thread fell somewhere in the middle, explaining that while they felt Beth's voice was mostly convincing, there were a few instances where they could hear her British accent coming out. They seemed to attribute this to the fact that Americans and Britons tend to pronounce certain things differently, such as the letter "R." One commenter remarked that this was especially noticeable with the word "lawyer."

But once again, most seem to agree that Reilly nailed the Montana accent. "Yep she sounds like folks out here in the West," one user commented in a separate Reddit thread on the matter, adding, "Her accent is spot on. She has a little bit of Utah in the accent too and it is perfect."