What’s Taylor Sheridan’s Secret? Helen Mirren Reveals His ‘1923’ Masterstroke

I think fans are going to be missing the morally-grey world that is the ‘Yellowstone’ spinoff ‘1923’ for a long time, not least because it’s led by the almighty duo Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.

We don’t get to see old female characters kicking ass in TV shows often, do we? At least not in the good kinds, but Mirren’s Cara Dutton was every bit the sharp-witted “cut you up into little pieces” kind of gal. And do we love her for it? Yes, we love her for it.

But for some reason, some of us, including Helen Mirren herself, believed that this fierce character won’t make it to the finale episode of the second season.

Creator Taylor Sheridan threw us a curveball with that one, didn’t he?

Helen Mirren “Fully Expected” Cara Dutton To Die In ‘1923’

Whilst Harrison Ford is busy dropping hints that his character may stay alive long enough to appear in ‘1944’ – the next chronological show in the ‘Yellowstone’ universe – Mirren is telling us that she didn’t even expect her character to last all the way to ‘1923’s’ ending.

The ending, of course, saw the Dutton family matriarch cuddling baby John, who is expected to be a direct descendant of John Dutton III (the one played by Kevin Costner, duh!)

“Harrison and I signed up for [1923] without having any idea of what the story was going to be, where it was going to go. I fully expected to be killed off,” Mirren told Gold Derby. “I did. I fully expected [it]. I thought, ‘Okay, obviously I’ll die in the second [season].”

For those of us who are holding up some kind of fantasy hope that ‘1923’ will return for a third installment, Mirren dutifully squashed our hopes when she casually revealed that the cast has always known that the show will have just two installments.

According to her, Sheridan planned it to have “a beginning, middle and an end, and that’s — and I love that. I thought that was great.”

Helen Mirren Reveals How Taylor Sheridan Surprised Her

Whilst Cara’s death was not a given for me exactly, it seemed to be for Mirren, who was left in so much shock when she discovered the story went in a different direction, she couldn’t help singing praises to the creative genius that is Taylor Sheridan.

“But I did expect to probably kick the bucket in the second-to-last episode or something,” she told the media outlet. “But no! There I am at the very end — that was great. That was a surprise.”

“I’m sure it took a lot of people by surprise. It’s not what you expect — and that’s what Taylor’s very good at.”

Be sure to catch up on everything happening with Yellowstone right now. Come back here often for all Yellowstone spoilers, news, and updates.

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