The Contender

From a stoic cowboy in 1923 to a white-collar lunatic in The Housemaid, Brandon Sklenar has shown he has the range and potential to be a leading man. Soon he'll have the chance to prove it.

- By Josh Rosenberg

Coat ($4,095), sweater ($895), and trousers ($795) by Canali; hat, stylist's own.

BRANDON SKLENAR IS BAWLING HIS EYES OUT. IT’S 2022, HE’S thirty-one years old, and he just left the biggest audition of his life: 1923, the Yellowstone prequel from TV kingpin Taylor Sheridan. The adrenaline is surging through his body, so Sklenar races to the bathroom—a space to breathe. Rejection hits heavy and often in acting, which he knows painfully well, but this time is different. He can feel with a rare certainty that his hard work has finally paid off, and he's overcome with relief.

Coat ($9,900), sweater ($5,000), and trousers ($1,850) by Brunello Cucinelli, Union Square watch ($18,000) by Tiffany & Co.; socks ($40) by Merz b. Schwanen; boots ($385) by Wolverine.

“You really feel like Sisyphus pushing this monumental boulder up the hill,” Sklenar tells me today. “Like you're the only person that can see why you keep doing it.” Now thirty-five, he’s sitting in a patch of grass in New York City on a break from production on his latest film. He’s multitasking, talking with me while rolling a cigarette as he reminisces about a day he will never forget. “I left the room and called my dad like, ‘I fucking got this,’ ” he recalls. “ ‘I’m pretty fucking sure.”

Coat ($10,700), sweater ($3,890), and trousers ($2,680) by Loro Piana; gloves, stylist's own.

Five minutes after he left the audition, Sheridan confirmed the actor’s gut feeling. After grinding out bit parts in Vice and Westworld