When more than 12 million people saw Orli Gottesman make her debut appearance on the TV show “Yellowstone,” they had no idea that starring in the popular show is just a small part of the super busy schedule for the 17-year-old Southwest Florida teenager.
She gets up at 5:30 each morning and drives herself to Cypress Lake High School in Fort Myers where she takes a challenging agenda of Advanced Placement and honors classes. After school, she is on to theater rehearsals, vocal lessons, or practice for the school’s varsity tennis team. She continues her exhaustive schedule many nights working as a hostess at a local restaurant to earn extra money.
“I love school,” Orli said. But she admits the schedule is not always easy.
“It’s really tricky,” she explained. “I have three electives–two theater and one vocal–so it is a balance between academics. I have AP Capstone Research and AP language and composition. I always had a knack for writing. Math is my strongest class.”
It’s hard enough for teenagers to excel in these challenging AP courses, but add in all the extracurricular activities and the time she misses when she heads to Montana to film “Yellowstone” and it seems almost impossible. But Orli loves it. Acting has been part of her life since she was four years old and her parents got her a modeling job. In those early days it was her parents who set things in motion, and Orli admits she didn’t always understand what she was doing.
“I feel like I was put into the whole industry by my parents,” she explained. “I was too young to understand what that meant. One of my first gigs was like a pool party and I thought it was actually a pool party, not modeling clothes.”
The shift from parent-led to Orli-led changed when she saw herself in her first film a few years later.
“It was the first film I did with people my age. I loved the relationships I had with the people my age, and I thought ‘I can to this’,” Orli described. “This makes me so happy. I never want to stop doing it. Every time I see myself on television or see a camera or am on stage, it makes me realize I love being out there.”
“Yellowstone” is her biggest part so far. She joined the cast as Halie in the Dec. 11, 2022, episode where she plays a love interest to Carter, played by actor Finn Little. Orli was in the background of some scenes the following week and had additional air time on the show in January.
“The whole experience of ‘Yellowstone’ was just crazy,” she admitted. “It was so different. I felt so much pressure just trying to live up to that standard. This is such a huge show, and I was so honored that they wanted me to play this person.”
She said the hardest part was being on the set with some big-name actors. The modern-day Western follows Kevin Costner’s character John Dutton and the rest of the Dutton family, who own the largest cattle ranch in Montana. The story features an ongoing drama with the family, developers, and the nearby national park and Broken Rock Indian Reservation.
“I was not nervous about the acting part of it,” she explained. “I was more nervous about the non-acting parts; about meeting people.”
She did enjoy bonding with Little, who is her age.
“Things are kind of awkward because that is how teenagers are,” Orli said. “But it was amazing working with him. He is so talented. We started talking about school, and we are both starting to get our driver’s licenses, so we talked about that. It does get easier.”
Before “Yellowstone” Orli modeled and did numerous television commercials for Florida Power & Light, Commerce Bank, and Burger King. She played Ophelia in the 2016 movie “Astronaut Camp.” In 2017, Orli’s family moved to California when she was cast as Jessica Alba’s daughter in the TV show “LA’s Finest.” She spent four years in California before returning to her native Southwest Florida.
Orli knows the business is competitive. Actors go to countless auditions just to be lucky enough to get cast in one project.
“You really have to stay persistent,” she stressed. “I have done hundreds of auditions and I have only gotten X amount [of parts]. You have to know it is not personal. A lot of it is out of your control.”
While Orli loves theater, she says television is her ultimate goal. Yet she doesn’t want to study acting in college.
“College is something that I am contemplating,” she explained. “I could study business, or I could go to college and study photography or film or play writing. I don’t want to put all that money down to study something I am already pursuing.”
Orli said family is the secret to her success.
“I just got so lucky with the family that I have,” she stressed. “My sister and my parents – that was a tremendous thing that sparked my career. My parents supported it, and my teachers and taking classes and everybody I met along the way have been so helpful.”