Randolph admittedly “had to digest” after her first read of the show’s scripts, but after that, she tells P her confident character “never surprised me”.

This post contains spoilers from the season 1 finale of Landman.

Michelle Randolph is not afraid of the judgment audiences might have on her Landman character.

The 27-year-old actress, who broke out in 1923, stars as 17-year-old Ainsley Norris in Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series about an oilman (Billy Bob Thornton) and his family in a West Texas town.

A troublemaker from her debut, sexually-confident Ainsley challenges her father Tommy (Thornton) at every turn, and in one particularly cheeky scene, tells her dad about her and her boyfriend’s agreement when it comes to sex.

Randolph tells PEOPLE she sat with the scripts for the first four episodes for “a while” before filming began in Fort Worth last January, and the much talked about scene between her and her onscreen dad was what she’d auditioned with.

“So that was just immediately who [Ainsley] was to me, for so long,” Randolph says, though she admits that the conversation in the first episode is what comes to mind as a particularly out-there scene or moment in the show.

Still, she admits, “When I first read [the scripts], I had to digest. And then, it just became like, that’s who she was. She never surprised me in a way, once I found her.”

“It was interesting watching the audience reaction to it because I had sat with it for so long,” she says, referring to the somewhat scathing response viewers had to Ainsley — who flits about her dad’s house — where he lives with another oilman and a lawyer — in skimpy bikinis and crop tops for much of the season. “It was like, ‘Oh, okay, we’re all going to process this again together.'”

Michelle Randolph as Ainsley Norris, Ali Larter as Angela Norris, and Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris in ‘Landman’. 

Since she’d been sitting with Ainsley for so long, she remembers thinking of the response, “‘Why is this a big deal?'” To her, it was “old news.”

“I think being comfortable in your sexuality is something to be celebrated. If that’s what you feel as a human [and] aligns with who you are, then be authentically yourself. And that’s what she’s doing,” Randolph says. “Though she is 17, so I think as she gets older, she’ll put up more boundaries and understand the way the world works more. But as far as she’s concerned, right now, this is the way she’s been raised and she’s going to figure out if she thinks that’s right or wrong or she wants to change it.”

She continues, “I’m so proud of the show that we made, and so I just didn’t let myself have a perspective on what the audience thought. I think I’ve said before, [that] I disassociated [during certain scenes], but you kind of have to. I did my job when I was filming and then I closed the door and we put it out there, and I’m excited to hopefully continue the character and that’s all I can do.”

Michelle Randolph as Ainsley Norris in ‘Landman’. 

It also helped to have such a tight real-life bond with Ali Larter, who plays Ainsley’s equally out-there mom, Angela.

“I think that’s part of the reason Ali and I just really bonded is we had each other, because her character is similar to Ainsley in some of the things she says, and so we just as a duo — we’re able to confide in each other,” she says. “And that made me feel so much better, especially too, because [Larter’s] been in the industry for so long, so she’s seen how this goes, and so I felt really safe with her.”

The finale also gave Randolph — whose older sister Cassie dated Colton Underwood for a year after appearing on his season of The Bachelor — a chance to explore a more vulnerable side of Ainsley, as she finally got what she’d been searching for: Ryder (Mitchell Slaggert) held her as they spent the night together.

“I think that kind of informs who she is to her core a little bit,” she says of the finale. “[Ainsley] can act like this very confident woman or young woman, but [she] still needs the safety at the end of the day. And that’s something that she’s learned from her dad a lot.”

Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, Michelle Randolph as Ainsley Norris and Ali Larter as Angela Norris in ‘Landman’. 

Like the rest of her castmates — which includes Jon Hamm, Demi Moore and Kayla Wallace — Randolph is hopeful that they’ll be packing their bags for another stint in Texas soon, and she says that how Ainsley will “evolve as a person” is something she’s “really excited to see” in a potential season 2.

“She’s not the 17-year-old who pretends she hates her life or her parents. It’s like, she’s a 17-year-old who’s just excited. Everything’s bright and she’s happy, and I love that so much.”

It’s safe to say she’s learned a thing or two from the bubbly, out-there teenager. “Her confidence is so contagious and how candid she is and just… She’s so herself. And so I felt like, when you go in with that energy every day for so long, that it’s impossible for it not to leak onto you.”

“I’m a very filtered person naturally because I’m a Virgo, and Ainsley is not, and I just love that about her. It’s so refreshing,” she adds.

In her own life, though, Randolph is planning to “tone it down a little bit.”

The season 1 finale of Landman is now streaming on Paramount+.