Natalie Alyn Lind grew up backstage. His mother is Barbara Alyn Woods, of One Tree Hill honor; his father, John Lind, is the first assistant director, an unglamorous field marshal who gets a set on a call sheet to wrap up. Which means Lind’s younger sister, Emily Alyn Lind, who also started acting at the age of six, has been hovering around the cameras since before she read the contract, and has a ten-year resume to show for it: a mutant in Marvel’s. The gifted; kidnapped daughter of David E. Kelley Big Sky; a spin on Stephen King’s prequel (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines); a slot in Colin Farrell’s woozy Apple TV noir Sugar. It’s a resume that could have made a household name years ago and somehow didn’t—until now. Like Oreana Lynn Jackson Dutton Ranchhe is part of the main cast of the biggest series launch in Paramount+ history: 12.9 million views in the first week, New Confirmed, the whole rodeo.
He felt the weight of it before one frame rolled over. A lifelong devotee who has seen every dusty corner Yellowstone The atmosphere, Lind knew exactly what he was going through. “There is a threat of not wanting to tarnish the original,” he told the Observer. “We loved it so much—and when you love something so much, you can’t help but need everyone to love it.” When the fans came roaring back, he says, it was the sound of a final gasp. For Lind, what makes Taylor Sheridan’s universe resonate is everything the audience has never seen. “Before we started filming, the founders gave us this book—all branches of the family, generations back,” he explains. “I know exactly what my character has been doing since the day he was born. That’s why these shows feel real. You don’t tell yourself who you are.”
Outside of the farm, he was busy painting a new scene behind the camera. His first film with a producer credit, a horror comedy Halloween shophe went from an obsession that he insists is genetic: his mother took him to the street—an actor with chainsaws who was in high spirits—when he was six months old. “It’s in my blood now” he laughed. She kept Michael Myers dolls instead of Barbies, and still puts slasher movies to bed. So when the 2023 strike left him with nothing to do, he stopped waiting for permission. “I can’t sit still—I’m always doing something,” he says. “At some point, I just thought, I can do this. I can make a movie. So we did.”
With Halloween shopfirst posters recently revealed and a film made under her shingle, Big Bad Pig Productions, Natalie Alyn Lind sat down with the Observer to talk about fronting one of the biggest television companies, building a second career behind the camera and the things she can’t walk—or wake up—without: a 17-year-old dog and a magazine that smells like old perfume. Here, in his words, Lind will basically not shoot, walk or sleep outside.
