Everything you need to know about Lilli Kay, the LGBTQ+ actress making waves in Yellowstone
Lilli Kay as Clara in Yellowstone season 5 (Paramount+)
Yellowstone star Lilli Kay has delighted viewers with her role as Clara in the neo-Western drama, after joining the hit show in season 5.
Kay, who is the daughter of Yellowstone director Stephen Kay, plays Clara Brewer, the assistant to the Dutton family patriarch and Montana Governor, John (played by Kevin Costner). She joined Yellowstone in 2022, playing and famously shared the show’s first LGBTQ+ kiss. The current season, the fifth, will be the last.
As per her Coverfly profile, she’s a vocal member of the LGBTQ+ community and seeks accurate and authentic on-screen queer representation.
Here’s everything you need to know about the talented star.
What have you seen Lilli Kay before?
Kay played Penelope Fowler in Netflix‘s 2019 supernatural horror show Chambers, opposite Nicholas Galitzine, but the series was cancelled after one season.
She also played Sofia Baxter in drama Your Honor, opposite Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston, queer star Hunter Doohan, and Call Me By Your Name‘s Michael Stuhlbarg, and featured in queer biopic Rustin last year.
Who is Lilli Kay dating?
Kay is dating actor and model Juli Kocemba, who describes themself as a “trans masc person using they/them pronouns.”
The pair have been posting together since 2022 and regularly appear side-by-side on red carpets.
Their relationship was confirmed when they locked lips in Yellowstone’s first non-heterosexual kiss.
In episode seven of the fifth season, “The Dream is Not Me”, the ranchers go to the Montana State Fair. In a fleeting moment, Clara and someone in a cowboy hat share a kiss.
Speaking about how the kiss came about, Kay told Deadline: “We were in our Covid protocol… we were trying to figure out who was easy and comfortable [to cast and] who was also in the testing cycle.
“My partner, Juli Kocemba, was there with me in Montana so they said: ‘Oh, let’s just have you guys make out in the background’.
“My partner’s non-binary, so we were like: ‘Well, it’s a genderfluid make-out in the background’. We thought nobody [would] make a big deal about it. Then a lot of people made a very big deal about it.”
Although many viewers were delighted by the unexpected kiss, it also enraged others who accused the show of “going woke”.
Who is Clara in Yellowstone season 5?
With the arrival – after a two-year wait – of the second part of the final season, Lilli Kay is back on our screens.
She first appeared in episode two of the fifth season, “The Sting of Wisdom”, as an assistant working for Montana governor John Dutton (Kevin Costner).
Piper Perabo, Kay’s stepmother, plays Dutton’s lover Summer.
Clara manages to stay at the ranch despite Dutton’s decision to fire all her colleagues in the office, and becomes a trusted advisor.
Yellowstone season 5 airs on Paramount+ in the UK.
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