Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford who shared the massive screen in “Mosquito Coastreunite 36 years afterward the small screen in1923” – “Yellowstonea prequel that continues Taylor Sheridan’s epic saga through the ages The Dutton ranch family.
Sunday’s premiere of the series attracted 7.4 million viewers on Paramount+ and linear TV streams – the streamer’s most watched premiere in the USA.
“We signed the contract without reading the script, with a way of religion and conviction [in Sheridan] and that she’s going to do something extraordinary,” Mirren, 77, told The Post. “I see it as America’s ‘War and Peace’ – this huge arc of American history through the intimate eyes of the people directly involved in making that history.
“I do not see it as a ‘franchise,'” Mirren said of Sheridan Dutton’s universe, which also includes last 12 months’s “1883starring Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as James and Margaret Dutton. “I see it as a rare essay on American history written in a way that couldn’t have been done years ago. We now take a look at history in a way more critical way.”
Because the title suggests, “1923”, streaming on Paramount+takes place after the tip of World War I and the early years of Prohibition. Mirren plays Irish-born Cara Dutton with Ford as Jacob Dutton, the brother of her late husband, James, who later married Cara and took over the family ranch in Montana.
![Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as Jacob and Cara Dutton. They are standing next to a ranch fence post; Jacob wraps his arm around Cara's waist. He is wearing a rancher's hat and she is wearing a gauzy gray dress.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/Ford_Mirren2.jpg?w=768)
![Helen Mirren as Cara Dutton. She is wearing a hat and her gloved hands are on her waist. He has a serious expression on his face.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/1923-1-1.jpg?w=1024)
Co-stars include James Badge Dale as John Dutton Sr.; Darren Mann as John Sr.’s son, Jack; Michelle Randolph as Elizabeth Stafford, Jack’s fiancée; Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton, a World War I veteran with battle scars separated from his family and hunting in Africa; Brian Geraghty (Big Sky’s creepy Ronald) as Zane, the Duttons’ loyal ranch foreman; and Sebastian Roch as Father Renaud, the principal of the American Indian School (which has a serious influence on the plot of “1923”).
“Cara survived. She is a warrior. It must be,” Mirren said of her on-screen alter ego. “She could be very much a product of being an immigrant on this immigrant country having to place her balls in that basket. That is the character of immigrants – they did not have a return ticket, that they had to make an effort here, they simply needed to, and that is still the case.
“Her marriage to Jacob is a real partnership.”
The eight-episode series was shot in Montana, which played a giant part in setting its contextual tone, Mirren said.
“The American landscape never fails me; wherever I am going in America, it is so beautiful and huge and overwhelming,” she said. “The last day of shooting was very cold, minus 25 degrees and snowing … and I used to be at the highest of Bear Mountain in Montana, standing there and pondering, ‘I am unable to wait to get back here.’ Strength can’t be overestimated [that landscape] and visually it’s amazing that the audience sees it too.”
![Michelle Randolph as Elizabeth Stafford. She is on the porch wearing a white dress with a blue sash and blue flowers on the dress. She has blonde hair.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/1923-4.jpg?w=1024)
![Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton. He's in the African bush, aiming his rifle and ready to fire. He is wearing a brown safari hat and a khaki shirt.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/1923-2.jpg?w=1024)
Mirren, who won an Oscar (“Queen“) and five Emmy Awards (including two for “prime suspect,for which she won three BAFTAs), said that she and Ford – who’s making her series debut – occasionally bumped into one another at industry events within the years following “Mosquito Coast”. “I used to be amazed that she remembered me in any respect,” she said. “After I worked with him before, our status was completely different. He was an enormous movie star, and I used to be a successful theater actress who had done a number of movies, but nothing of his caliber.
“He’s all the time been kind and generous, and now he’s much more so,” she said. “What’s amazing about Harrison is the very fact [that] he’s been a giant movie star for a really very long time, and yet he’s an worker. He just desires to work and doesn’t have the desire to make a fuss or special treatment about it. He’s all the time there, and the crew never waits for him. And that is what I really like about him.
Mirren, who isn’t any stranger to television, said “1923” offers a recent tackle the genre, each visually and thematically.
“Our whole idea of watching TV has completely modified within the last 10 years… and Taylor all the time put it that way [that[ we’re basically doing a 10-hour film [with ‘1923’] and I occur to actually like long movies,” she said. “I really like the best way the characters may be fully developed, and on TV, with this long form, you’ve gotten the chance to develop the characters and plot in a much grander and more complex way than for those who only had two hours to inform the story.
“It’s great to take a seat at home and watch something of the size and fantastic thing about this work that we placed on the screen, but I also love cinema with an audience,” she said. “I feel like we want to keep up that culture – there’s nothing higher than sitting in an audience of individuals sniffling together or laughing at the identical joke together.”