The Stunning Transformation Of Landman Star Paulina Chávez

The likes of Demi Moore, Andy Garcia, and the oft-tragic Billy Bob Thornton may have brought the star power to "Landman," just one of multiple neo-Westerns the prolific showrunner Taylor Sheridan has conceived following the phenomenal success of "Yellowstone." But their performances have often been matched by the cast's less familiar names, whether Jacob Lofland — no stranger to a stunning transformation himself — as geology student Cooper Norris, Kayla Wallace as lawyer Rebecca Falcone, or Paulina Chávez as widowed single mother Ariana Medina. In fact, thanks to her character's turbulent narrative arc, the latter is fast becoming the show's breakout star.

But what exactly do we know about the Texan native? What experience did she have before signing up to the Paramount+ hit, for example? What are her career aspirations? And which fellow Latina actor does she not only count as her idol, but has she also had the privilege of working with on several occasions? Here's a look at Chávez's stunning transformation.

Paulina Chávez got the acting bug from a young age. In fact, she was just 7-years-old when she first started developing her talents, taking drama classes at the San Antonio elementary school that employed her mom before signing up for lessons with Cathryn Sullivan, the acting coach whose clients included Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato.

"It's something that I kind of came on my own," Chávez explained to The Fresno Bee when asked if her family had a history in the business they call show, although her paternal grandma was something of a multi-talent. "And I think she would have been in the industry if we would have known how to. Yeah, ours was just trial and error. We didn't know anybody. Just trying to find opportunities."

But it's not just in front of the camera where Chávez's ambitions lie. "I would love to be a director and a new future producer as well and work on stories that I really care about and really matter and need to be told," she added. "I also would like to do roles that don't put me in a box and so I can venture out."

After appearing in various local theater productions, Paulina Chávez made the leap from the stage to the screen in 2016 with a one-off supporting part in "Day 5," the post-apocalyptic web series about an epidemic which has caused most of civilization to die after falling asleep.

And the Texan had no qualms about making her debut in front of the cameras in such a nightmarish show. "The episode I was a part of was pretty gory and I loved it," she said effusively to Glitter magazine about her brief time on set. However, Chávez spent the next decade largely swerving anything that could be described as horror before returning to the genre in a vampire tale.

Indeed, in 2026, it was announced that Chávez would be joining the likes of Eoin Macken, Kieron Moore, and Alicia Sanz in "Crave," the haunting tale of a grief-stricken young girl who discovers a bloodsucking underworld masquerading as a traveling carnival.

After appearing in front of the cameras for the first time on apocalyptic web drama "Day 5," Paulina Chávez made the step up to television in 2018 with an appearance on "Scandal Made Me Famous," the Reelz Channel's salacious documentary series which explores how relative unknowns were thrust into the spotlight in infamous circumstances.

Of course, Chávez, whose persona is very much at the squeaky-clean end of the spectrum, wasn't the subject. However, she did portray her. Yes, the Texan was cast as one of the world's most well-known women, the oft-shady Kim Kardashian, for various re-enactments of her controversial rise to stardom.

Chávez went on to land supporting roles in several young adult movies including "Colossal Youth," "Li'l Mayne and the Knuckleheads," and "Teenage Girl: Valerie's Holiday" before taking top billing in demon hunting web series "Padre Pio" where she played a youngster caught in the crossfire.

Paulina Chávez got her big break in 2020 when she was cast as the titular character in "The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia." It was a Netflix comedy about a 15-year-old rocket scientist and robotics engineer who moves into her football coach uncle's California home to improve her chances of landing a job with NASA.

Although Chávez might not have any ambitions to work with the world's leading space agency, she was still able to relate to the show's prodigious heroine. "First of all, we are both Latinas who have been focusing on training to pursue our careers," she told Young Entertainment. "In order to be able to follow my dreams I was homeschooled and missed out on the high school experience. Ashley focused on school and earned her Ph.D. Ashley moved across the country to work at JPL in Pasadena and I also moved from Texas to Los Angeles to work on the Netflix series and follow my dreams."

The show, which was given 14 episodes, a Christmas special, and a crossover with other Netflix comedies, was a baptism of fire for the relatively inexperienced Chávez. "We would receive the script the night before shooting and because our writers were constantly revising it, it was always best to memorize the night before... My secret is that I would put my script under my pillow so that as I slept my brain absorbed the lines."

Although "The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia" failed to make it to a second season, its leading lady remains hugely proud that it graced the screen at all, particularly for how it represented young Latina girls, a demographic she felt had been routinely ignored during her own upbringing.

"I never saw myself in English television, further, not in positive roles," Paulina Chávez explained to Hola! "And so, being able to see something like Selena Gomez or Eva Longoria in 'Desperate Housewives,' was something that was impactful for me... And we want to see more of our faces on screen and behind the camera as well." In fact, the Texan got to work with the latter when she took the director's chair for an episode of the Netflix comedy. And her efforts didn't go unnoticed. She was nominated for Best Young Actor two years running at the Imagen Foundation Awards.

It's not just in show business where Chávez hopes to inspire the younger generation, though. She's also helped to develop a Latinx student scholarship at her school in San Antonio. "My mom is an educator, so I believe education is a very important thing," she told People, (via Yahoo! Entertainment). "I just want to help Latinos pursue whatever they want to do. It's just creating opportunities for them and opening the doors for many possibilities."

After adding festive movie "Feliz NaviDAD" to her resume, Paulina Chávez joined the second season of "Fate: The Winx Saga," the supernatural drama based on the same-named animation about a boarding school in the magical land of Otherworld. And the arrival of her character, earth fairy Flora, had been hotly anticipated, even by the star herself.

"I knew how excited people were to watch Flora come and when they announced it, everybody was so positive and uplifting about it," Chávez told Entertainment Weekly about the show having grown up watching its cartoon source material. However, it took a while for the Texan to get to grips with the filming, particularly for its use of CGI.

"It's so strategic, and takes a lot of time and patience," Chávez explained about working in front of a green screen. "It was also wonderful, I got to learn a lot." But the star admitted that even when she'd got to grips with the technology, she still struggled to deal with the script, "The dialogue sounded so funny. We have to pretend something's happening and out of context, it would sound weird." Sadly, like her previous Netflix venture, she only got to experience its joys for one season.

While her previous films had been straight to VOD affairs, "The Long Game" finally gave Paulina Chávez the opportunity to see herself on the big screen. Indeed, adapted from Humberto G. Garcia's book "Mustang Miracle," the sporting drama about a group of young Mexican-American caddies who decide to build their own golf course took just over $3 million at the U.S. box office.

Chávez portrayed Daniela Torres, a fledgling writer, who like the film's young golfers, is desperate to make a better life for herself. "She knows what she wants and she's not going to let any man get in the way of that. I very much base her off the women in my life," the Texan explained to KSAT.com about how she tackled the role.

So how did working on a full-blown motion picture compare to her earlier work? "Doing T.V. is very, very, very fast-paced," Chávez told THS. "Especially the sitcom. We have four cameras and it's very much 'go, go, go.' And this one's kind of different. We get to explore more with our characters and play around a little bit. And we have a great director who encouraged that and was open to collaboration, which is very refreshing."

Five years after first working with childhood heroine Eva Longoria on Netflix comedy "The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia," Paulina Chávez got the chance to fangirl all over again when the pair were cast as mother and daughter in Disney sequel "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip."

It's little surprise, therefore, that the Texan revealed to Hola! that making the 2025 follow-up to "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," was a blast, "What you see on screen is how fun it was shooting it... it really felt like family just making something beautiful and laughing together, and somewhere in there we really did make a great anomaly."

As well as reuniting with the former Desperate Housewife, Chávez — who played Alexander's older sister Mia in the family comedy — also enjoyed how the filming reminded her of earlier days as an aspiring thespian, "My mom and I would drive to LA all the time from San Antonio... It's such a long trip, and I'm like, 'I'm never going to do that ever again,' but probably I will [laughs]. But it's my favorite thing ever. I love road trips."

Although a familiar face within the world of young adult dramas and family comedies, Paulina Chávez only really made herself known to older audiences when she was cast as Ariana Medina in Taylor Sheridan's neo-Western "Landman." The character, a widowed single mom, was a marked departure from the carefree roles she'd been accustomed to. But as she explained to Backstage, she couldn't wait to show her range.

"... Living with it for almost six months was torturous," Chávez said about the lengthy wait between getting her first scripts and her first day on set. "I just so badly wanted to film because it was in me. I had the notes that Taylor had given me, I knew exactly what I was going to do, and so I was like, 'I need to be on set right now to shoot this!' Especially because Ariana's storyline is so heavy. You're living with it, and it's lingering in the back of your mind."

Chávez, who believed that she wouldn't get the part because of her age, was also able to draw upon her own experiences for the role having lost her grandmother shortly before landing her first gig in Hollywood, "And that grief never goes away — you just grow around it. I still think about my grandma every day. No matter what, Ariana's always going to carry that first love."

It's fair to say that Paulina Chávez has been put through her paces during her stint as widowed single mom Ariana Medina in Taylor Sheridan's "Landman." Take the second season's penultimate episode, for example, in which her character is sexually assaulted by a customer at the bar she's employed at.

"I let myself be in the moment, and allowed myself to be terrified," Chávez told The Hollywood Reporter about how she pushed herself to her limits while shooting the difficult scene. "I needed a minute after that first take of my shirt being ripped and my pants being pulled down. Your body doesn't differentiate between what's real and what's fake. Not a lot of people realize that's the hardest part of acting — having to tell your body, 'Hey, you're fine.'"

Chávez, who revealed that she cried when she first read the episode's script, believes that the acting training she began as a youngster proved to be both a help and a hindrance. "I feel like empathy is my superpower to be able to jump into a situation. But I'm a very sensitive soul, and now I can't really watch heavy stuff because it'll put me in a very terrible place... So I took my reaction and I kept it in my pocket for when I had to do it on the day." Here's a look at other tragic details about the cast of "Landman."

Although Paulina Chávez doesn't yet have any children of her own — unlike many of her "Landman" castmates and their real-life partners, she appears to be single — she was still able to draw upon personal experience while playing widowed single mom Ariana Median in "Landman." For she's very much a been a hands-on auntie to her nephew ever since he was born.

Indeed, five months before she got her audition for the Taylor Sheridan hit, Chávez's sister became a first-time mother. Subsequently, the Texan and her mother headed to Colorado to provide some extra family support. "It's so much work," she acknowledged to Schön! about raising a child. "I have no idea how two people do it, let alone a single parent like Ariana."

Chávez helped out with everything from feeding to diaper changing during this period. However, she soon learned that portraying motherhood on camera was different to the real thing, particularly when it comes to breastfeeding, "I worked with a pillow, and even if I was holding it correctly, it all comes down to a camera angle. My intimacy coordinator gave a lot of cues on how to imitate breastfeeding as Ariana properly."

As well as drawing upon her own experiences of grief and childcare for her role as Ariana Medina in Taylor Sheridan's "Landman," Paulina Chávez has also been able to find inspiration the opposite way. Indeed, in an interview with Elle, the Texan revealed that playing the widowed single mom for two seasons has impacted her personal life, and thankfully in a positive way.

"There's something so beautiful with Taylor's characters," Chávez said. "They're all three-dimensional. And I think existing in how confident Ariana is in herself is something that I definitely took from her this season. Now I'm not afraid to speak my mind." And apparently no one on set is safe from this new no-holds-barred approach.

"And that's something that can be very intimidating when you're working with icons," Chávez added about a show which boasts the likes of Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm. "So I just have to trust myself and trust my work. There's definitely a lot of interesting scenes that you'll see later on this season that will show that she's bolder and stronger than ever."

Having found the unsettling storylines she's filmed while playing Ariana Medina in "Landman" difficult to deal with, you might expect that Paulina Chávez would want to embrace something a little lighter for her next project. To the contrary, however, the Texan only wants to get darker.

"I really want to get into psychological [films] and really get into somebody's head," Chávez told Elle when asked about her ideal role before referring to Emerald Fennell's provocative feminist thriller "Promising Young Woman" and the turn-of-the-century adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho." "I want to make people afraid a little."

However, Chávez, who's flexed her funny bones in the likes of "The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia" and "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip," acknowledged that making people laugh is often harder to do than making people scared. "I feel like with drama, there's so much space and time to think. The beautiful thing about "Landman" is that there are comedic moments, like life. But comedies are definitely something you have to exercise your muscles [for], and it's all about timing. You have to believe what you're saying. You're not looking for the laugh; you just have to do it." Here's a look at several dark scandals involving the "Landman" cast.