Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren bring couple power to '1923' Western without knocking boots

USA Today

23-02-2025

Helen Mirren has love advice for young people that demands to be heeded. And not just because the Dame of the British Empire and acting icon has been married for 28 years to director Taylor Hackford.
Long-term relationship success doesn't come from passionate lovemaking, but from enduring emotional support, she says. "The sex and all of that is fabulous; don't get me wrong, it's great," Mirren says. "But it's the partnership that survives. That's one of the most beautiful things in human relationships. And we don't often see that on TV."
We do in "1923," the Taylor Sheridan Yellowstone-verse Prohibition Era drama that kicks off Season 2 on Paramount+ Sunday, centered on the rare (for TV) mature relationship. Mirren, 79, stars as Cara Dutton, the 44-year partner of Jacob Dutton, played by Harrison Ford, 82.
The 20th-century Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is under siege from a greedy developer (James Bond star Timothy Dalton) and his thugs in the new season. But as the lion-killing nephew (Brandon Sklenar) races home from Kenya to save the day. the story backbone remains Cara and Jacob holding down the fort.
"If we're the backbone then I'm the bone, and she's the back," Ford says of his screen partner.
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Jokes aside, Ford and Mirren sharing the lead roles in "1923" is gold dust in the Sheridan-verse. Jacob Dutton's great-great nephew, "Yellowstone" patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner), was a widower whose wife died in a tragic horseback accident. Sylvester Stallone's "Tulsa King" and Billy Bob Thornton's "Landman" are both divorcees.
The "1923" superstar pairing offers couple chemistry fueled by a personal history that dates back to 1986 when Ford and Mirren worked together on "The Mosquito Coast."
"We know each other from 40 years ago," Ford says. "We haven't been in touch that much over the years, but there's an incredible natural fit when I'm working with her."
Mirren compares the relationship with Ford, who has been married to "Ally McBeal" star Calista Flockhart since 2010, to meeting up with a friend "you loved in college, but you haven't seen for years. When you're back together, there's that friendship immediately."
Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer bring the couple heat to '1923'
For feverish passion, "1923" highlights Sklenar's Spencer and his new bride, English socialite Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer). The passionate duo is still traveling from Kenya to Montana to save the besieged Dutton family, but the first season's most notable period of youthful heat stemmed from their Season 1 vacation on Zanzibar's white sands beaches.
"It's different flavors. To see young people in love, we see that so often," says Sklenar, who starred in 2024's "It Ends With Us" (a film overshadowed by a protracted legal battle between co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni). "To see older people just crazy about each other is so sweet and so pure. We don't see a lot of that on TV."
While the senior Dutton's relationship is relatively chaste, Ford jokingly insists Jacob has a yet-unseen "sex scene on the beach. I still have sand on my ass." He then relents, admitting he brings "the wisdom and the charm and the sagacity" to the frozen Montana winter setting.
Mirren and Ford began filming Season 2 last summer when both quietly celebrated birthdays (Ford on July 13, Mirren on July 26). "We're not into big birthday celebrations," Mirren says. But each showed they can still bring the action depicting the growing battle against Whitfield, whose twisted sexual deviance serves as a stark contrast to the wholesome Duttons.
Ford pulls off the cowboy fighting antics while growling even tougher threats of harm in the icon's trademark ornery voice. His "1923" co-stars say that Ford, who owns an 800-acre Wyoming ranch, enthusiastically leads the horseback charge during midnight cattle-herding scenes. "Cowboys don't talk too much about horses," he says, shrugging off the compliments. "I've been riding for so many years, it's not a big deal. It may be exciting now, but it was a fact of life then."
Mirren was pulled straight into the action on her first day of Season 1, shooting a scene in which Cara provides emergency gunshot care to Jacob on the Dutton Ranch dining-room table. "I had been shot nine times, so I was a bleeding piece of meat in that scene," Ford says. "That was all Helen."
There's no emotion as Cara barked out urgent orders to save her husband. "Cara goes immediately into practical mode: 'Get him there, clear that, do this.' There wasn't time for emotional stuff," Mirren says. "Reading the diaries of people in that era, death is on every page. Blood and death was absolutely an everyday part of their lives."
Mirren retrained on gun safety, as Cara is increasingly required to brandish her shotgun in the new season. "It's my sort of secret addiction, even if you realize how very dangerous guns are," she says. In Episode 1, Cara takes out an attacking mountain lion.
Ford feigns reluctance about giving the hero moment to his screen wife. "I will personally take credit for killing the mountain lion; that was me," he says. "Although it's reasonable to give Helen credit for almost everything because she plays such a strong character."