Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren on Their Great Anticipation for ‘1923’ Season 2
Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren are in such lock step after playing husband and wife that they are finishing each other’s sentences.
The film icons are once again starring on TV in the second season of 1923, which released its first episode on Sunday. The pair, when discussing their Yellowstone prequel series, spoke about picking up right where they left off as Jacob and Cara Dutton, despite a two-year break between filming.
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“We came back with alacrity and excitement, not quite knowing what was going to happen, not knowing how it was going to finish up, but with great anticipation,” Mirren told The Hollywood Reporter in a joint Zoom interview with Ford about returning to the Montana set and the Dutton elders’ Yellowstone ranch.
Paramount+ hasn’t confirmed if 1923 will end with season two, but when creator Taylor Sheridan first pitched the series, he had a two-season saga plotted out. Brandon Sklenar, who plays the pair’s nephew Spencer Dutton, told THR that he has known the season two ending from the beginning, calling it the “one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read in my life.” But Ford and Mirren were more coy about what’s ahead in a series where anyone’s fate could be up in the air amid the perils of their early 20th century saga.
As 1923 continues to explore a new Dutton generation (following the 1883 prequel), Ford and Mirren talk below with THR about why they appreciate Sheridan’s steadfast vision and his knack for writing strong female roles, as well as their powerful onscreen love story.
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You had a long break between filming seasons one and two. What was it like when you returned to set and how did it feel to get back into your Dutton characters?
HARRISON FORD: You put on the hat, you put on the boots, you put on the spurs, you meet your horse…
HELEN MIRREN: … you walk into the house, and the house was exactly the same as we had left it. The house is really built on a real hillside. It’s there and it stayed there until we came back to it. So it was exactly the same house, which was great. It’s funny when you go back to something, and it was a long time as you say, we went through COVID and all the rest of it, but it was like, “Bang, we’re back.” It could have been yesterday. Back in the relationship. Back in the mutual love and respect that we have. Back with our lovely cowboys who are great and everyone a little bit older…
FORD: (Laughs)
MIRREN: … but it was like two weeks had gone by. Back with our great writing that we respected so much the first time around. So we came back with alacrity and excitement, not quite knowing what was going to happen, not knowing how it was going to finish up, but with great anticipation.
Was 1923 pitched to you as a two-season story? Has it changed along the way?
FORD: I think everybody (laughs) remembers different parts of this story. For instance, I thought that I was told that Helen had already signed on, so that was the bait [for me], and she was told that I was signed on…
MIRREN: I’m the carrot!
FORD: We had no scripts, really [when we signed on], but we had our personal experience with Taylor Sheridan and our knowledge of what he had done in the past. This is a guy with incredible ambition, but it doesn’t have that kind of unctuous feel that ambition has. It’s just that he knows what he wants. He has a clear idea of how to get there and there’s no bullshit in the way, just straight-forward storytelling. Powerful, imaginative storytelling. The depth of his understanding of the characters he’s writing and the gift of these scripts is the pleasure of the process.
And the people we’re working with are extraordinarily talented, our director Ben Richardson and his group. It’s fitting into this vast, powerful machinery fueled by a really rich energy source, which is the understanding of this period of time and the value of knowing it and remembering it to face the contingencies of our current lives.
With season one, you shot the first three episodes and then you didn’t know what was going to happen next. Were you similarly finding out about the story as you went when filming season two?
MIRREN: Absolutely. We didn’t know. That’s the other amazing thing about the whole thing: Like life, you don’t know what’s coming. We get our scripts probably three or four weeks [ahead]. I don’t know how they organize it; it’s incredible how the director prepares. But we don’t have much of an idea of where it’s going. That gives it an excitement and a thrill, so it’s a weird combination between if you like the insecurity of that, but with unbelievable security. The security of a team, a machine, an expertise and a filmic knowledge, coming primarily from the director then from our cinematographer, the camera people and everybody else. There’s this amazingly beautiful machine at work. You’re not quite sure where it’s going, but you know you can rely on the machine, absolutely, and so you’re in very safe hands. I never had a feeling of insecurity ever.
FORD: I think when you’re working at the rate that we are, we often get scenes maybe just a week before we shoot it, but we’re so busy with what we’re doing that day that we don’t really have time to reflect on it. But the writing is so strong that when you arrive in a scene with those words, you just have to say the words. The character has been developed for you by the writer, and the extension or the complication of that character is in that scene. You just have to say the words and be in the room. Be there and it happens to you. You don’t have to act it. It happens to you.
If we know anything about Taylor Sheridan, it’s that he writes epic finales, whether they are season or series finales. The way that this season two ends, would you both be open to continuing the story? Does it keep the door open?
MIRREN: (Laughing) Well, if any other job came my way where I got to work with Harrison, I would say yes in a nanosecond. If it happens to be an extension of this story, absolutely. As long as Harrison is in it, I’ll be there.
FORD: (Laughing) That’s acting!
Harrison, would you say then, you agree?
FORD: I value this relationship that we’re responsible for. It’s a demonstration of how to get through life with a domestic partner. It is a partnership as well as a love story, and that partnership is very powerful and instructive. I’ll leave it at that.
MIRREN: Young women should be very grateful to Taylor Sheridan for writing such great women roles. Cara [Mirren’s character] is just one of them. He’s written a whole series of great, great women’s roles. Those roles didn’t exist when I was growing up in our business. Even as an audience member, I never saw these people on the screen. I never really liked Westerns because the women in them were so awful. I just love the fact that young women now can watch 1923 or any of Taylor’s pieces and see really interesting, complicated, vulnerable, strong… just real people who happen to be women on the screen.
Who know how to use a shotgun, too.
MIRREN: That’s not the most important thing at all. It’s having complexity as a character.
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1923 season two releases new episodes Sundays on Paramount+; the first episode is now streaming. Read THR‘s premiere interview with Brandan Sklenar.
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