Dawn Olivieri doesn’t look the same since leaving the show this fall.
The 43-year-old beauty played the evil fixer Sarah Atwood on Yellowstone.
She had dark short hair and dressed like a businesswoman – that is when she was not flaunting her toned body in lingerie when seducing Jamie Dutton, played by Wes Bentley.
In real life she does not look the same.
This month the dynamo actress – who is also on Lioness – reminded fans what she really looks like when she attended a premiere for the movie Homestead at the The Grove theater in Los Angeles.
Dawn had long light brown hair, softer neutral-toned makeup and she was dressed in an elegant low-cut metallic dress.
Dawn Olivieri doesn’t look the same since leaving the show this fall. The 43-year-old beauty played the evil fixer Sarah Atwood on Yellowstone
She had dark short hair – a wig – and dressed like a businesswoman – that is when she was not flaunting her toned body in lingerie when seducing Jamie Dutton, played by Wes Bentley
Dawn had no issues stripping down to her lingerie for key scenes on Yellowstone. She has also appeared on two other Taylor Sheridan shows
The 43-year-old was the sex crazed mastermind for Market Equities behind killing John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner.
That led to her being shot to death in her car by an assassin in a brutal end to her reign of terror.
If her face looks familiar that is because she has appeared on two other shows from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.
And in one of them she remarkably plays an ancestor of John Dutton.
In addition to Yellowstone, she starred as Claire Dutton in the prequel 1883, which starred Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.
And the looker recently popped up on the CIA black ops show Lioness as U.S. Army Sergeant Major Amber Whalen opposite Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldana.
Fans have taken to X this month to express their shock over Dawn’s acting range.
‘Dude, that hot lady on Yellowstone was the drab old woman on 1883? Get out,’ wrote one fan.
A fan then shared: ‘After making her look like dog meat for 1883, they owed her. Was happy to see her as a femme fatale in Yellowstone. Sad she is gone.’
Another said: ‘They un-glammed her for Lioness, amazing, I barely recognized her. From Yellowstone to Lioness in one week is awesome.’
Olivieri – who has also been on Heroes and House Of Lies – knew that she was cast as the Market Equities fixer in Yellowstone for a powerful reason, she told The Hollywood Reporter last month.
This month she showed off her real appearance with the wig and suits gone
Seen at the premiere for the movie Homestead at the The Grove theater in Los Angeles
Dawn had long light brown hair, softer neutral-toned makeup and she was dressed in an elegant low-cut metallic dress
And she was not shocked by her cruel murder when she read the script.
‘I always sort of know it’s coming,’ she shared. ‘And to read it is like, “OK, here we go.” We got what we all wanted. I think everyone is happy that the train station came.’
The ‘train station’ is where bad people get killed.
Olivieri has called her Yellowstone character a serpent who never shows her colors.
‘I tend to play that character that you love to hate, and that character is always setting up the hero to win. And, how does the hero win? It’s sort of the symbiotic relationship that goes part and parcel with the villain, or the antagonist,’ she said.
‘Dying as an actor is really an interesting journey, because I really try to go as deep as I possibly can and I make it as real as I possibly can. And so to have died as many times as I have died in my career (laughs) — [the saying is to] ‘die before you die,’ I’m just getting a chance to do it professionally!’
And she is close to the Yellowstone creator.
‘Taylor is special, he has been for me, because a death for me just means a life somewhere else, and he immediately moved me to another show. So, it’s a fun thing to read and then be like, “Oh, I’m doing a different thing now,”‘ she said.
She is talking about her role on Lioness.
‘He moved me there. They didn’t want to announce that beforehand, because that would be a spoiler and tip everyone off.’
She was seen opposite Saldana in a December 1 episode.
As far as dying in both 1883 and Yellowstone, Dawn says of Sheridan: ‘It’s out of control. He’s a crazy man, and I love it so much!’
She added: ‘He’s still doing whatever the f*** he wants!’
Dawn also talked about how her characters are so different.
‘They are all totally different. It’s one of the things he says to me. Taylor calls me his Swiss Army knife. He’ll text me and say, “Yo, Swiss Army knife. I need ya.” And I say, “Reporting for duty.”
‘My last text to him was literally, “You tell me what and where, and I’m there.” And that’s it, that’s my response. Another show, another day, another character.’
Before she was killed on Yellowstone, she seemed to reveal she had feelings for Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley).
‘It’s a funny thing, it’s a choice that you make. I could have played that differently. I could have played her hard and cool, and that she had to keep it together,’ shared Dawn.
‘The word villain is sort of this overarching label that we put on the bad character that the hero is fighting against. But for me, a villain is something different.
‘A villain is a very strong-minded, strong-willed person that maybe has a little trauma in their life early on that has created this sort of work-obsessed, power-obsessed … even to have the awareness of power that villains do, I think makes you a villain.
‘Because people become scared of your grasp on the dynamics of how power operates. And when you can use that to your advantage, you become a very formidable character. And these characters that Taylor writes are no different, these women especially.
‘And so I play them with as much of myself as I can. I’m very aware of power distribution, of hierarchical presence amongst people.’
‘I think it’s why I gravitated toward a horse rescue [in my real life], because horses innately are very spatially aware. They have herd dynamics that are extremely contingent on who is more powerful: Who’s stronger and why? In horses, you can watch the lead mare and how they’re the calmest, but they have the most power.
‘There’s a whole language going on across the board in nature that you can take on as a human being, and when you mimic that, you become the boss. It’s how you look at things. It’s how much you trust in a moment. It’s how much you trust yourself. So a villain is just extremely strong as a human being, and that’s very off-putting for most people.’
Here she is seen in a suit when she finds out the professional hit on John Dutton was being discovered
In this scene, Sarah tells Jamie to man up and stop worrying about being an accessory to his dad’s murder; minutes later she was shot to death
And she described how she carefully adds to a character.
‘It’s not interesting to watch someone who has all the power and who is the best at everything die. You are like, “Great, goodbye.” You don’t care about that person.
‘My aim with every character is that, maybe I do strong-willed, dastardly things with a lot of zeal, but at the end, I want to see her unraveled and broken apart. Because that’s the moment before death that I hope everyone touches, including the characters that I created, because I care about them. They are human too, and that is the human piece.
She also talked playing Claire in 1883.
‘She had that last moment right before death where we finally get to see her. We finally understood her,’ said Dawn of her grumpy pioneer.
‘It’s scary, but I think a lot of people in their human experience, maybe that’s their journey, too.
‘They are that tough father or that mother who could never love properly, or maybe they had traumas or were leveled by addictions, and it’s that last moment people talk about where they have this sort of angelic energy wash over them and they become a child again, and they are able to talk the deepest they’ve ever been able to talk to their parent or significant other.’
She added: ‘I’m always fascinated by that moment, and Taylor writes that moment. He writes that types of characters and I think it’s really profound.’
Dawn loved that she could give evil Sarah some dimension.
‘So to have that moment with Sarah was my goalpost. Sarah was using Jamie, but she was also falling in love with him,’ she said.
‘Was she in love with him in the end and, how the hell does Jamie survive what’s coming for him now without her?
‘The truth is that a lot of people, as they live their life, end up having skewed perspectives. To touch someone who has been molested is almost like a pain, right? Can you imagine? So sometimes you get these interesting psyches where to open up is painful, or not safe, or trauma.
‘So to watch a character potentially be leveled by the gravitas of a moment, it leads them [Sarah and Jamie] into an equilibrium of truth. Because in truth, we all want connection. We all want to be touched in a loving way when we’re OK and safe, and when we’ve been treated right. And Sarah is not OK. She’s not right. So to her, power is love and the transaction is what feels like love: ‘You care about me if you win with me, or if you listen to everything I say.’
If her face looks familiar that is because she has appeared on two other shows from Yellowstone creator Sheridan. And in one of them she remarkably plays an ancestor of John Dutton. In addition to Yellowstone, she starred as Claire Dutton in the prequel 1883, which starred Faith Hill
The looker recently popped up on the CIA black ops show Lioness as U.S. Army Sergeant Major Amber Whalen opposite Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldana
‘I think that was her way of love, and I think Jamie responded to that. We were able to see that he also spoke that language, and that was the connection they had,’ added the Florida native.
‘They could have been an insane powerful couple, who would have been very scary to be working up against! Because she completed him in a way that he needed her to. He was weak. He couldn’t make decisions. He was lacking the self-initiative and power, and she showed up and she was like, ‘I’ll give it to you. I can coach you through it. I will give you the confidence that you need to lead this thing,’ and that’s a power couple. I don’t care who has what; when it works and it fits together? Boom, it goes.
Dawn then said: ‘I don’t play characters that lose a lot of the time. I call myself the closer. If you’re bringing me in, I’m succeeding at the thing you are giving me, I’m ruining something — the show is over! (Laughs.) It’s really amazing. But if you don’t write that, you are not utilizing the strength that I bring. I can count on it with Taylor. He sees it now and I pretty much know that’s what he’ll do. Because I can do it. It’s rare that I’m not the strongest character in the room, even with men.
‘A lot of characters I play, I am the formidable opponent. Whether it’s Don Cheadle [in House of Lies] or whoever I am playing opposite, I am cast because I’m going to give them a run for their money. So, why would you cast this character if you weren’t going to do that? You have to give her a little bit in order for her to take it away.’