Riley Green is making his acting debut on Paramount’s Yellowstone spinoff Marshals, playing Garrett, a former Navy SEAL written with extreme PTSD from his time in service. Green said the role carried a different kind of pressure than stepping onstage, because he was trying to represent something he does not personally know.
“There’s a level of pressure trying to represent something like that, that you don’t feel just playing any character,” Green said in a Military.com interview. “That’s something I know nothing about beyond just relationships and friends that I’ve got that have served.”
That gap is why the production brought real Navy SEALs to set to answer questions and guide the technical details. Green said that help mattered, because viewers with military experience notice when something looks fake. He also spent downtime working on basic combat mechanics, including reloading a weapon during 30-minute breaks. “We might have a 30-minute break, and I’d be over there just constantly changing the magazine out, putting it back in,” he said. “That’s what’s going to make it seem real to somebody who actually has been in that situation.”
Green said the set felt different from the stage, where he is the one drawing the crowd. “When I go to a show, everybody’s there to see me,” he said. “When you show up on a set… I’m not the guy. I’m like the new guy.” That shift brought its own discipline. “There’s a pressure of, man, I’ve got to do my job right, or we’re all going to be here all day,” he said, adding that the mindset sharpened his work. “That level of performance definitely helped.”
Marshals is a Yellowstone spinoff, and Garrett is written as a former teammate of Kayce Dutton, with combat trauma at the center of the role. Green said the part also connects back to his own life as a musician, since Garrett plays guitar. It is a fit that gives the country star a first screen role built on two things he already knows how to do in public: perform, and keep working until it feels real. That blend may be the reason his debut lands with more weight than a typical cameo, and it is the thread readers will be watching when Marshals moves forward. For more on the spinoff’s direction, see Adam Sanders’ preview of His To Mine as Marshals turns to Family Business and the earlier look at how Luke Grimes brings Riley Green to Marshals in acting debut. Green’s first appearance is also tied to the April 19 rollout covered in Riley Green to make acting debut on CBS’s Marshals April 19.
