‘Fire Country’ Star Max Thieriot Likes to Watch Things Grow - The New York Times

For Max Thieriot, one of the creators and the star of the CBS series "Fire Country," all roads lead back to his roots.

He was raised on a vineyard off the coast of Sonoma in Northern California. And for a while, he lived nearby on 90 acres of his own with his wife and two sons.

But "Fire Country" — about prison inmates joining elite firefighters to battle the region's blazes in exchange for shorter sentences — shoots near Vancouver, British Columbia. So Thieriot, 35, moved his family to rural Washington, where his kids could continue to run around with the chickens and the goats.

"I wanted to try and keep the same lifestyle for my wife and my boys, and not to totally upend their world," he said.

Alas, Thieriot still has wine in his blood.

About 14 years ago, he and a couple of childhood friends started their own vineyard. The big lesson?

"It's much faster to do, and makes a lot more sense, when you have an entire crew," he admitted before discussing the tractors, the road trips and the grapevines that keep him grounded.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Family

I consider my closest friends my family, but certainly at the center of my universe is my wife and my boys. I can have an exhausting day and no matter what, when I come home and I get to see my wife and I get to see my kids, it makes all of the other stuff go away.

The Ruby Mountains in Nevada

Mount Jefferson is almost 12,000 feet and there's this insane plateau on the top of it, this huge meadow mesa, and in the summertime it's filled with bighorn sheep. There's a lot of Native American artifacts up there. You can see these rock outcroppings where they would have their hunting camps and their tents. You can imagine what it was like 1,000 years ago to be sitting in that place.

Digging in the Dirt

Growing up on a vineyard, one of my favorite things to do was to ride on the tractor with my dad. So as soon as we bought our Sonoma place, I went out and purchased a couple of tractors. I got a Kubota Skid Steer because there was a lot of cleaning-up work to do. Then I got a vineyard tractor, a narrow New Holland. And up here I've got a utility tractor. The boys love being able to dig holes and have a bucket and all the fun attachments that I can put on it.

Road Trips

As soon as I had children, I suddenly became a terrible flyer. So when Covid happened, we started driving everywhere. We call it the Thieriot Family Adventures. Frankly, when you've got a 6- and an 8-year-old who can be best friends one moment and then going at it the next, when we're contained in our car, our wild, crazy family stuff is just our stuff. We don't have to share it with everybody in the airport.

The 49ers

My family's been in San Francisco for something like six generations now. I have a Joe Montana jersey, signed, that my dad got me when I was a kid. My boys have grown to love the sport as well. They both play flag football. I'm not quite ready for them to start tackling.

Storytelling

I never felt that confident in my writing because English was not my strongest class. I didn't have the same vocabulary as a lot of writers. But I eventually realized that I didn't need to as long as I could make someone feel something.

Working Out

I was always a skinny kid, and I wanted to gain muscle. As soon as I became dedicated enough to it, and just through perseverance, I started to see this change. I realized, OK, if you really commit yourself to something, you can achieve pretty amazing things.

Farm to Table

We had a guy named Ulises Valdez who was one of our vineyard managers, and he said to me, "Max, when you work hard, the food tastes a lot better." And that stuck with me. I feel like when I'm raising a beef cow, I'm watching the animal grow. I know what I'm feeding it. I have an appreciation for its life, where this meat has come from.

Mood Music

I think about music as I'm directing. What's the tempo of the scene? And if I can imagine a song right now, what is the song that's playing here and how is it motivating whatever the audience is supposed to be feeling at this point?

Lifelong Friends

I grew up in a small town where a lot of my friends I've known since childhood. I think it has kept me grounded in a way. It's brought me back to my roots, brought me back to the people that know me for me and who I really am at my core and not the actor that they see on TV.