Harrison Ford on ‘1923’ and His Love of Westerns for the “Old-Fashioned Movie-Making” With No CGI
With the second season of Taylor Sheridan’s 1923, Harrison Ford returns to a genre that he’s always loved: the Western.
The Indiana Jones superstar’s résumé in that area includes 2011’s Cowboys & Aliens, 1979’s The Frisco Kid and 1968’s Journey to Shiloh, along with the first season of the Yellowstone-universe series, in which he plays patriarch Jacob Dutton. The show follows an earlier generation of the Dutton family as they face the rise of Western expansion, Prohibition and the Great Depression.
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“I love the viscerality of it, I love the physical nature of the storytelling, I love being in natural circumstances,” Ford said of Westerns at the show’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, telling The Hollywood Reporter it’s “a kind of old-fashioned movie-making mostly, no CGI or very little CGI — a little something to sweeten the location. But it’s really essential, old-time storytelling and I love working with this kind of material.”
He also teased that when it comes to watching the show himself, he’s not looking at his own performance but, “I sure like seeing everybody else.” That “everybody else” includes co-stars Helen Mirren, Brandon Sklenar, Julia Schlaepfer, Aminah Nieves and Michelle Randolph.
The love story between Sklenar’s Spencer Dutton and Schlaepfer’s Alexandra was a fan favorite in season one and continues to be a focus in season two, as the two are separated and trying to reunite in Montana.
“It’s so overwhelming — when we filmed it, we were in Africa in a little bubble so you forget that people are going to watch it,” Schlaepfer said of the reaction to their romantic storyline. “You want to do the Dutton family justice, and I’m just so grateful that people see something in the love story that either is something they long for or something they had, and it’s been beautiful. People have shared their love stories with me, it’s been really nice.”
The cast also touched on how they approach the show’s often brutal material, with plenty of violence and suffering reflective of the era.
“The longer I do this, I don’t put too much on it. I don’t try to get into anything too crazy; I know this character so well it kind of just comes as second nature,” Sklenar said. “If you do it enough, it obviously affects your nervous system, your body doesn’t know that it’s not real, but I don’t take things home. At the end of the day you’re playing pretend, so it’s good to remind yourself to have fun.”
Randolph, who also stars on Sheridan’s Landman, added, “I think just being in Montana, once you’re in the wardrobe and you’re on set and you’re around everyone, you just fall right into it. I was curious, having two full years in between shooting [from season one], I wasn’t quite sure how it would feel to go back to a character like that and it was shocking how quickly everyone just fell back into the show.”
The second season of 1923 premieres Sunday on Paramount+.
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