NHRA Pro Stock’s Chris McGaha Shares a Local’s Perspective on “Landman”
NHRA’s McGaha Shares an Odessa Local’s Perspective Icon Sportswire - Getty Images Paramount-Plus’ drama series Landman , TV’s hottest current property, is a captivating West Texas oil-industry chronicle of roughnecks and rednecks, hotheads and hot women, menaces and mavericks, high rollers and low-lifes—all seemingly with criminal-grade chips on their shoulders.
Every episode of the completed two seasons features the corporate and the common, the reckless and considerate, the superficial and substantive, staunch allies and stiff rivals.
And this herd of headstrong characters is corralled in the Lone Star State’s Permian Basin, primarily in Midland and Odessa—home to real-life, non-Hollywood drag racers Chad Green (Funny Car), Chris and Mason McGaha (Pro Stock), and Mason Wright (Pro Mod). Chris McGaha, who proudly said he has watched every episode through Season 2 and is awaiting the late-2026 Season 3 debut, owns Harlow Sammons of Odessa.
It’s an oilfield equipment and service supply company that manufactures custom equipment. While he doesn’t have the same responsibilities as the constantly under-seige main character Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton, McGaha said he can sympathize with him. “I don’t actually go out on location like Billy Bob does. And I’m not a landman, per se,” he said.
“But being a shop foreman at a big shop like this, I feel some of his headaches and think, ‘God, this is my life some days.’ “And then my dad [NHRA Division 4 Hall of Famer Lester McGaha] laughed, because before I had started watching, he told me, ‘Wait till you watch it.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ McGaha said.
“He goes, "Well, his wife and his daughter remind me of your wife and daughter." That means McGaha just might have his hands full. Thornton’s TV wife, Angela (Ali Larter), and daughter, Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), keep things lively with their, umm… sensual flaunting, financial indulgences, wild antics, and—in the case of the latter—unintentionally hilarious prattling.
Holly McGaha and daughter Berkley might not appreciate the comparison, although Berkley does attend Texas Christian University, like fictional Ainsley Norris, and presumably did not turn her admission interview into an entertaining, eye-rolling farce like Ainsley did.
The McGahas have a quiet, young son, Mason—also an NHRA Pro Stock driver—who’s following in his father’s footsteps, just like the fictional Norris family has son Cooper (Jacob Lofland), who’s learning the oil industry the hard way.
Chris McGaha said, “It’s like you sit here and watch it and you’re just like… And we don’t have food fights at our house, but some of the stuff that goes on at their dinner is like, ‘Oh my God, this is stuff that goes on in my own house!’ I'm like, ‘Oh my God, they got a camera in my house!’ “A lot of it is close to home,” he said.
“A bunch of it hits close to home.” As Green and Wright know, as well, “Everybody out here is somehow or another connected to the oilfield,” McGaha said. “Midland/Odessa’s kind of like the way for the oilfield like a Charlotte, North Carolina, is for racing and NASCAR. It’s a different world out here.” Chris and Mason McGaha.