Juliette Lewis Talks Working With Peter Dinklage on ‘The Thicket’ and Explains Her Surprise Exit From ‘Yellowjackets’: ‘I’m Good for a Series for Two Seasons’

Juliette Lewis has a very good reason why her riding skills are so impressive in her new thriller, “The Thicket.”

“I’m a ribbon barrel racer who finished third,” Lewis said on this week’s episode of “Just for Variety.” “I was a horseman. I grew up riding horses before I was 12. So the first thing we did in Calgary (where the movie was shot in the dead of winter) was ride horses. They wanted to see how we rode. I got a really good grade on my riding.”

In the Elliott Lester-directed film (in theaters September 6), based on the eponymous book by Joe R. Lansdale, Lewis plays Bill Cut Throat, a violent and hardened outlaw in the early 20th century who kidnaps a young girl (Esmé Creed-Miles). The girl’s brother (Levon Hawke) hires a bounty hunter (Peter Dinklage) to save his sister.

Cut Throat Bill, written in the original book as a man,…