NEW YORK – Finn Little, still 19, is getting the biggest break of his professional life with “Dutton Ranch,” Taylor Sheridan’s highly anticipated spin-off from the Kevin Costner Western hit “Yellowstone.”

“Dutton Ranch” shifts locales to Texas but retains the starry headliners Kelly Reilly (as Beth Dutton) and Cole Hauser (Rip Wheeler).

Little joined Taylor’s troupe, first as the teenaged orphan Carter in “Yellowstone” and now the nine-episode “Dutton Ranch” season.

Carter, he noted, “is the adopted son of Beth and Rip. He met Beth outside a hospital in S4 of ‘Yellowstone’ and Beth sees quite a lot of young Rip in him.

“She’s wanting to help him,” he explained in an interview at the Plaza Hotel, “nurture him. Make him the person that he’s become at this point. After a big mishap in Montana, Carter was forced to move to Texas with Beth and Rip.”

An Australian raised “in the suburbs of Brisbane,” Little sees this bright career as a lucky accident.

Acting, he said, “was never really in my mind. I just got so lucky when I was 10 years old and auditioned for am Australian film called ‘Storm Boy.’ I got that film and basically, every day on set was just having the most fun of my life and I absolutely fell in love with the craft.

“I was 11 and I realized this is something I’m going to do for the rest of my life.

That led in 2019 to a life-changing meeting with Taylor Sheridan, “in an audition room for a film that he directed and that I did with Angelina Jolie, ‘Those Who Wish Me Dead.’

“I got back home and a couple months later, my agent got a call from Taylor saying, ‘I’ve written Finn a part in ‘Yellowstone,’ and I’d like him to come and do his best work.”

Starring in a hit series, he acknowledged, “Is pretty awesome. It’s great that it can come out every week, because you get to see the live reaction from the viewers.”

As far as fame, recognition, stardom – “I don’t really see it as that. I just see it as a job that I love to do. And it just happens to be that a lot of people are watching me.”

As for Carter, a troubled teen?

“From the start of ‘Yellowstone,’ his journey was definitely more about recovery, being taken under Beth and Rip’s wings. Where this season of ‘Dutton Ranch’ his journey is about becoming more independent, finding out who he is. His whole life has been molded into certain ways. This season is his first time where he steps back from it all and goes, ‘You know, what do I want to do?’”

Paramount+ streams two episodes of “Dutton Ranch” May 15