Editor’s note: The below interview contains major spoilers for the 1923 Season 2 finale.While both seasons of Taylor Sheridan’s Dutton prequel series 1923 have been full of emotional moments, the Season 2 finale — which doubles as the show’s ending — didn’t waste any time in depicting one of the most heartbreaking chapters in Dutton family history. As Jacob (Harrison Ford) and Cara (Helen Mirren) await their nephew Spencer’s (Brandon Sklenar) arrival in Montana, they’re not the only ones trying to lay eyes on the heir to the Yellowstone. As Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton) makes his move against the Duttons, Spencer’s wife Alex (Julia Schlaepfer) fights to make her way to the family’s homestead — and it all comes to a head in the finale, “A Dream and a Memory.”
Ahead of the finale’s premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with several cast members about their characters’ biggest moments in 1923’s conclusion, including Sklenar and Schlaepfer. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the two explain why they’re still mourning the end of the show, why Sklenar hasn’t been able to bring himself to watch the episode yet, and why they’re ultimately grateful for the experience of 1923. They also discuss filming Spencer and Alex’s last dance and why it was so surreal, and Sklenar confirms whether that’s him beneath the makeup as the show’s older version of Spencer.
COLLIDER: I know both of you have probably had a bit more time to mourn and process the ending than the rest of us, but what was your reaction when you read it in the script?
JULIA SCHLAEPFER: You know what? It’s funny, when we’ve had more time with it, but I still really feel like I’m grieving. It’s a whole different ballgame watching it. When I first got the script, it’s so heartbreaking and so tragic, but also I’m so grateful to have gotten to tell a story like that that is so epic and to play a character like her. But yeah, reading it to acting it to watching it are our three levels of it. When Alex died, I feel like that piece of me died as well. It’s been a lot, it’s been overwhelming. It’s just been so much to process, but I feel really grateful, and it was the hardest and greatest experience of my life.
BRANDON SKLENAR: It was really… What Jules said about this, the three parts of it, the reading it and the doing it and the watching it. I haven’t watched it yet. I read it and I did it, and it was just emotional. It’s really emotional. I still get teared up talking about the finale and those scenes. It’s like we lived it all so much. We went to Africa, we were on the beach in Kenya. We flipped over in a car. We swam in the ocean. We were on the backside of a boat. We did all that stuff, and we did it for months and months and months and months.
So the memories that you have aren’t… What was it like when I filmed that scene? No, I lived that scene. Every moment that they have together is a key moment in their relationship on screen. The emotional response to these things is so real and so in your mind as a memory, and [Taylor] really, really takes full advantage of that in the writing in this finale.
I’ve said it before, but I couldn’t even prepare the episode. I couldn’t memorize it, because I would get so emotional just reading it. I was like, “I don’t want to exhaust… I don’t want to tap this well too much.” But there’s still water in it to this day, just talking about it. It’s just so well-written. It’s crazy. It’s crazy the way that [Taylor’s] able to tap into that emotion and that core feeling that these characters have.
Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer Reflect on Filming ‘1923’s Final Scene

Image via Paramount+

Where the episode ends, with the two of them in the afterlife — was that something that you filmed at the very end of the show?
SKLENAR: It was towards the end, right, Jules?
SCHLAEPFER: It was definitely towards the end. Well, I think, but I do… It was towards the end. We don’t have that many scenes together, so I think it was the second scene that we filmed together of Season 2. But it was nice. We had some sweet dance lessons to get into it, and then we hadn’t filmed the death scene or any of that stuff yet, so it was for me it was odd. I was like, “This is it.” And then we shot it.
We work with so many cameras. There are five cameras on us all the time. Sometimes you just don’t know where they are, and every take you do, it’s like a play. You do a fallout, and it’s so much fun that way. I remember saying that line a couple times, and our director came up and he was like, “Well, we just shot the last scene of the show.” And I was like, “What are you talking about? That can’t be it.” It was this really almost anticlimactic thing, but we both felt the weight of how big this moment was. So it was really surreal, I would say.
SKLENAR: It was an out-of-body experience. Yeah. Yeah. It really was. I was like, “Whoa. Okay. This is… That’s it. That’s it. Is that it? That’s it. Wow. Okay. Okay. Are you sure? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.” A lot of just sitting and nodding. And it’s also just profoundly beautiful. She looks at him and says the line and grabs his hand, and then he spins her and dips her. It’s like, get out of here. [Laughs]

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“We Find a New Level of Strength From Her”: ‘1923’s Julia Schlaepfer Discusses the Process of Making Season 2’s Brutal Ellis Island Episode

Schlaepfer also discusses how Alex’s pregnancy raises the stakes and her character’s epic Dutton romance.

Brandon, I’m curious: the scene in the lead-up to the afterlife moment, of Spencer at Alex’s grave — is that you in the old man Dutton makeup?
SKLENAR: No. That is another actor. That is an actor who actually isn’t as old as that. They found an actor older than me and then made him look older. I lobbied… I wanted the makeup, I lobbied for it. I was like, “Put me in the chair.” And then [director] Ben [Richardson] was like, “Absolutely not. We’re not dealing with all that.” I was like, “Fair. Fair enough.” I’ve just always wanted a reason to pretend to be really old.
SCHLAEPFER: It’s funny, Brandon, you haven’t watched it yet, but you don’t really see his face at all, so you could have done it.
All episodes of 1923 are available to stream on Paramount+.

1923

Release Date

2022 – 2024

Network

Paramount+

Directors

Guy Ferland