An actress from the hit show “Yellowstone” has been charged with collecting nearly $100,000 in disability payments while working on the western series which stars Kevin Costner, authorities said.
Q’orianka Kilcher, 32, of North Hollywood, California, was charged with two felony counts of workers’ compensation insurance fraud, according to a statement from the California Department of Insurance. Kilcher, who played Angela Blue Thunder in four episodes of the Paramount Network series, allegedly worked for several months from 2019 to 2021, while at the same time claiming disability due to a neck injury.
“According to records, she returned to the doctor and started receiving disability benefits five days after last working on the show,” the California Department of Insurance said in a statement.
Kilcher, who also played Pocahontas in the 2005 film “The New World,” claimed she injured her neck and right shoulder while filming “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” in 2019.
A year later, she allegedly told a doctor handling her disability insurance claim that she had been offered work but was unable to perform because of severe pain, according to the insurance department’s statement.
From 2019 through 2021, Kilcher received $96,838 in temporary disability benefits, according to the department.
Kilcher turned herself in and was arraigned in May, the statement said. Her attorney, Michael Becker, said Kilcher was injured while riding in a production vehicle during the “Dora” filming.
Becker said his client never lied in order to obtain benefits, according to CVT News.
“Third-party doctors verified her injury and entitlement to benefits,” Becker said. “Ms. Kilcher was at all times candid with her doctors and treatment providers…and she never intentionally accepted benefits that she did not believe she was entitled to.”
Kilcher will “vigorously defend herself and asks that she be afforded the presumption of innocence both in and outside the courthouse,” Becker added.
The fifth season of “Yellowstone” is set to premiere in November, as The Daily Wire previously reported. The show focuses on the lives of the Dutton family, the owners of the largest ranch in Montana. The clan’s patriarch, played by Costner, is in a constant battle to protect the ranching lifestyle from encroaching forces and to keep his scheming children from undermining each other.
The Western drama hit the network in 2018 and has drawn considerable critical acclaim without pushing “woke” storylines.