JP Gauna went from a Dallas sidewalk to 1923, American Primeval, and Netflix in one year. The full story of Hollywood's most quietly powerful Native actor.
He was crossing the street in Dallas when a television crew waved him over. JP Gauna, the JP Gauna actor now appearing on three major streaming platforms in the same calendar year, almost kept walking. Someone shoved a business card into his hand and told him to take a photo against a white wall and email it. He laughed. He did it anyway. Five minutes later, his phone rang. He had a role on Queen of the South before he had any idea what he was doing.
That is how careers start sometimes, not in some conservatory in New York or an MFA program in Los Angeles, but on a sidewalk in Texas, in a moment so ordinary it almost doesn't happen.
Jeremy "JP" Gauna grew up in Texas with two things locked into him early: athletic discipline and work ethic. He was all-state in high school, a dual-sport college athlete, and eventually played semi-pro basketball in Oklahoma City. He is Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Mexican, and he carries both with him. His grandfather, Jimmy Lee Barkus, is the man he points to when the conversation turns to foundations. The lesson was practical and absolute: if you have a car, the distance to the job is not an excuse. You show up. You work.
"Choctaws are hard workers," Gauna has said, and he means it as both a cultural observation and a personal creed.
Before acting, he spent seven years in marketing and advertising at The Dallas Morning News. That is not a footnote. That is the whole first chapter. Seven years of corporate work, building skills, paying bills, and having zero reason to believe any of it would pivot into a television career. Then came that walk to work, that film crew, that hallway marked for actors.
Once he landed background work on Queen of the South, the veteran actor Zahn McClarnon, who has since become one of the most respected Indigenous voices on television, told him the truth plainly: if he was serious about this, he needed training. Gauna enrolled at R.E.A.C.T. Studio under instructor Michelle Sherrill. He used paid time off from the newspaper, burning vacation days to sit in acting classes. He eventually earned a small speaking role on Queen of the South, which got him an agent. Then COVID hit, and the newspaper career ended with a severance package and the encouragement of colleagues who saw something in him he was still learning to trust.
The pandemic that silenced everything else gave him his next opening. His friend Willie Molina called asking if he wanted to work as a production assistant on The Chosen. Gauna had no idea what the job entailed. He took it.
The Yellowstone universe found him first as a warrior, not a supporting character, not comic relief, not a Hollywood Indian in the tired, degraded sense of that phrase. In 1883, the sprawling Paramount+ prequel that introduced audiences to the Dutton family origins, Gauna played the Native warrior whose arrow ended the life of Elsa Dutton, played by Isabel May. It is the kind of role that defines a performance with one scene. He appeared in two episodes. He was unforgettable.
That role was not background noise. It was a pivot point in the entire series, the moment the show committed to refusing any version of history where westward expansion is a triumphant march. The first season of 1923 tracked the character of Teonna Rainwater as she escaped a brutal Indian assimilation boarding school run by the Catholic Church, and the larger Sheridan universe had been building Indigenous storylines with genuine weight for years. Gauna's warrior in 1883 was part of that architecture, a reminder that the land the Duttons claimed was already inhabited by people who would defend it. The Hollywood Reporter
He did not complain about the brevity of the role. He understood what it meant inside the story.
What happened next requires context, and some care.
Cole Brings Plenty was found dead in Kansas at age 27 in April of 2024, months before filming of 1923 Season 2 began. He had been playing Pete Plenty Clouds in Season 1, and there was significant storyline still ahead for the character. His death was a blow to an entire cast and crew that had become something close to family. The Season 2 premiere honored him with an "In Memoriam" tribute, showing his photo before the first episode's story began. Just JaredJust Jared
The producers faced a choice: write Pete out, or find someone who could carry the character forward with integrity. They chose to continue the story, and they chose JP Gauna.
Gauna earned the approval of Cole Brings Plenty's family before accepting the role. That detail is not procedural. It is the whole moral weight of the decision compressed into a single act of respect. He did not take the job and announce himself. He went to the family first. MovieWeb
"It is a lot of weight on my shoulders, but I gladly wear it," Gauna said.
The two men had known each other personally, which made the assignment simultaneously easier and harder. Gauna has spoken publicly about their conversations, the daily check-ins, his friend's barely contained excitement about the upcoming season. "Cole had so much expectations with the character. He had so much joy knowing that he was getting to be a part of six episodes, and that was taken away from him abruptly," Gauna told The Hollywood Reporter. Collider
"Having that conversation with Taylor [Sheridan] at the beginning was very bittersweet," Gauna said. "I want to celebrate this opportunity, but I also want to grieve for my friend." Collider
That is not the language of an actor angling for a profile piece. That is a person holding two real things at once.
Gauna appeared in six episodes of 1923 Season 2 as Pete Plenty Clouds, and his co-star Aminah Nieves, who plays Teonna Rainwater, made clear that his connection to Cole was not a liability but a bridge. "Because Jeremy also knew Coco, that created an already established safe and protective space, and he honored Coco as best as he could. I think he's done a great job. It couldn't have been anyone else," Nieves said. The Hollywood Reporter
While the 1923 storyline generated most of the press around Gauna in early 2025, he had already delivered a full performance arc in another major production before Pete Plenty Clouds appeared on screen.
American Primeval, Netflix's six-episode limited series set during the Utah War of 1857, premiered January 9, 2025, to critical attention as an unflinching Western that dismantled the romanticized mythology of the American frontier. Gauna played Tall Shadow across five episodes, a substantial commitment in a show built around a strong ensemble cast that included Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin. Rotten Tomatoes
Critics praised the series as a brutal and visually stunning production, calling it arguably the best TV series about the American West. Reviews pointed specifically to the show's commitment to honest Indigenous representation, the idea that Native people in this period were not background ornamentation but active, complex forces in the story of the frontier. Rotten Tomatoes
That is the kind of work Gauna has been quietly accumulating. Not the one-episode splash. The five-episode build. The six-episode arc. The steady presence that makes other actors lean on him for the emotional grounding of a scene.
There is a question worth asking any actor who takes on the roles Gauna gravitates toward. The boarding schools. The raids. The forced assimilation. The loss. Why keep choosing stories that sit inside the most painful chapters of American history?
His answer is direct: "You don't want to deal with it because it's too rough; it's too personal; it's too close to home. Those are the stories that I want to be a part of, the ones that make you feel uncomfortable and make you understand what really happened."
He has also said this, which should be printed on a wall somewhere: "Without these stories being told, history could repeat itself. And we definitely do not need to regress. We need to progress."
That is a conservative truth dressed in the language of Indigenous advocacy, because it is both. The belief that history must be known accurately, that forgetting is dangerous, that the past is not optional background reading, these are not partisan positions. They are responsible ones. A USC study examining the 1,600 top-grossing films between 2007 and 2022 found that fewer than 0.25% of all speaking roles went to Native American characters, with the percentage never exceeding 1% in any single year evaluated. In that context, every role Gauna takes is pushing against a documented scarcity, not a perceived one. Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
He is also aware of what happens when the door opens. "I've been fortunate enough to walk and step through that door but then stick a boulder in the door to keep it open for others."
That is the work beyond the work.
Gauna's IMDb page currently lists 14 acting credits spanning 2018 through 2025, with a pre-production project already in the pipeline. He will play Uncle Ray in Drew's World, adding yet another character to a growing body of work that now spans Netflix, Paramount+, network television, and independent film, including Terror on the Prairie, The Last Son, Far Haven, Birthright Outlaw, Cottonmouth (available on Prime Video), and The Harbinger.
He is also still the person who believes humor is a practical tool, not a retreat from hard subject matter. "If I can make one person smile a day, then I am doing something right." He has said he believes humor is one of the most underrated mechanisms for ending racism. That reads as a serious position, not a platitude.
The man who almost didn't cross the street is now one of the most consistently working Native actors in American television. He did not get here through a diversity mandate or a studio initiative. He got here because his grandfather taught him that distance is not an excuse, and because someone on a film crew waved him into a hallway, and because he went to acting class on his vacation days, and because when a friend died and left a role behind, he asked the family for permission before he said yes.
That is a story Hollywood rarely tells. StucciMedia is telling it.
The JP Gauna actor story is about more than credits and streaming platforms. It is about what happens when a person builds something real, brick by brick, without a shortcut in sight, and then uses the platform that comes from that discipline to say things that need saying.
A recent study found that television shows featuring authentic Native American representation significantly increase support for Indigenous issues and receive stronger critical and audience approval, which means what Gauna is doing on screen is measurably changing how audiences understand a portion of American history they were never taught properly. That is not a minor contribution. NCTA
He is 36, working at a pace most actors half his age cannot sustain, carrying the weight of a friend's unfinished role with grace, and keeping the door propped open for whoever is coming behind him.
The sidwalk in Dallas was just the beginning.
Q: Who is JP Gauna the actor? A: JP Gauna, full name Jeremy Gauna, is a Choctaw Native American and Mexican actor from Texas. Now based in Dallas, he holds 14 credits across television and film, including roles in 1883, 1923, American Primeval, and Blue Ridge: The Series. He began acting after a chance encounter with a film crew in Dallas and trained at R.E.A.C.T. Studio before signing with an agent following a speaking role on Queen of the South.
Q: Who replaced Cole Brings Plenty in 1923 Season 2? A: JP Gauna replaced the late Cole Brings Plenty in the role of Pete Plenty Clouds in 1923 Season 2 on Paramount+. The two men had known each other personally. Gauna received approval from Brings Plenty's family before accepting the role and appeared in six episodes of the season. Co-star Aminah Nieves said of the casting: it could not have been anyone else.
Q: What is JP Gauna in on Netflix? A: JP Gauna plays the character Tall Shadow in American Primeval, a six-episode Netflix limited series that premiered January 9, 2025. The series is set during the Utah War of 1857 and received critical praise for its unflinching portrayal of the American frontier. Gauna appeared across five of the six episodes.
Q: Is JP Gauna actually Native American? A: Yes. JP Gauna is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and is also of Mexican heritage. His Indigenous identity is central to the roles he pursues and the mission behind his work. He has spoken publicly about the responsibility of portraying Native stories authentically and the importance of telling uncomfortable histories so they are not repeated.
Q: What did JP Gauna do before acting? A: Before his acting career, JP Gauna spent seven years working in marketing and advertising at The Dallas Morning News in Dallas, Texas. He was also a high school all-state athlete and dual-sport college athlete who played semi-pro basketball in Oklahoma City. He began acting training after a chance encounter with a television film crew and used paid time off from the newspaper to attend classes at R.E.A.C.T. Studio.
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