1923’s Brandon Sklenar: Spencer Isn’t Thinking About Fatherhood ‘At All’ (Sorry, Alex!)
On 1923, Alex’s desire to make it to Montana became a necessity the moment she learned she was pregnant with Spencer’s baby. The knowledge she was going to be a mother has both driven and sustained her during what has been, to date, a very rough journey from England. (And she’s got so far to go!)
Meanwhile, series star Brandon Sklenar says, so far in Season 2, Spencer probably hasn’t spent a single minute considering the fact that he might be a dad soon — or ever.
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To be fair, Spencer’s had his own share of challenges as he travels home to help save the family ranch. And while Alex has been aware of the pregnancy since the Season 2 premiere (and some of us had our suspicions earlier), the father-to-be remains unaware that there’s another Dutton on the way.
To that point, Sklenar tells us, Spencer is so focused on getting back to Uncle Jake and Aunt Cara that creating the next branch of his family’s tree is the farthest thing from his mind.
“I don’t think he’s thinking about it at all,” he tells me, re: fatherhood, during a recent chat. “I think he’s already got enough on his plate. He’s just trying to make sure that his family is alive, his land is there and he sees his wife again. He’s motivated by those very powerful ‘why’s, you know? And beyond that, I don’t think he really is caring about anything else.”
As Spencer knows from his aunt’s letters, the situation at the homestead is dire. His greatest fear, Skelnar says, is “that they’ll be dead and gone, and someone else will be there, and that he’ll never see Alex again. Then he would have to live with that guilt.” He pauses a moment. “I don’t think he’d be able to do that.”
Plus, it’s been quite some time since he read Cara’s last letter and even longer since she wrote it. “He’s just fearing the impending doom of getting home to nothing,” Sklenar adds.
Unlike his father in 1883 and his progeny in Yellowstone, Spencer doesn’t care about legacy. “I don’t think he’s thinking years in the future at all. I think he’s focused on surviving, because he has so much in his way constantly,” Sklenar says. “He’s very much in the moment and trying to handle whatever is thrown at him on any given day, because it’s relentless.”
The nonstop trials have worn on Spencer: That conversation in the premiere (read full recap) where he stopped Luca from jumping off the boat hinted that the former big-game hunter himself has entertained the thought of permanently leaving the planet once or twice. “Oh yeah, for sure,” Sklenar says, nodding. So, what stopped him?
“He’s such a survivor, and he’s survived through so much,” he says. He goes through Spencer’s sizzle reel of sadness: Dad murdered, mother frozen to death, winter alone with his little brother, World War I, lion attacks — you get the idea. “He has this drive to live. And I think there’s times when he wanted to die, which is why he threw himself in the most extreme danger possible, but he has that Dutton quality where you just can’t kill him.”
Sklenar laughs. “I think there’s been moments when he [would’ve had] no problem dying. And now he definitely does not want to die because he has so much to do and so much to live for.”
1923 streams new episodes Sundays on Paramount+.
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