Brandon Sklenar, Julia Schlaepfer Q&A [Spoilers]

Editor’s Note: The following “1923” interview with Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer contains spoilers for the “1923” finale, including reveals about the fates of multiple characters.

Taylor Sheridan has a singular ability to rip your heart out and still make it satisfying. As much of a manly man as he is, he seems to profoundly understand that sometimes it feels good to cry after all.

That is certainly the case with the series finale of “1923.”

There were many tear-stained moments in the finale, but the one that will endure with viewers forever is the shocking death of Julia Schlaepfer’s Alexandra. The English aristocrat was one-half of one of TV‘s greatest romances, having fallen in love with Brandon Sklenar’s big game hunter Spencer Dutton in equatorial Africa. Together, they fought off lions while clinging to a tree, fired off shots at swarming sharks while atop a capsized boat, and dealt with sneering members of the extended British royal family while on an ocean liner. Alexandra turned out actually to be a royal herself, and her fiance was infuriated that she ditched him to run off with Spencer, who was hurrying back to Montana to save his family from the range war they’d suddenly found themselves in.

That ocean liner encounter resulted in a deckside duel and Spencer and Alexandra being forcibly separated despite having gotten married. For the entirety of Season 2, then, they’ve been pursuing entirely separate journeys to Montana, with Alexandra’s being notably worse: being robbed, being sexually assaulted, and ultimately, just when she thinks she catches a break with kind English couple Paul and Hillary willing to drive her from Chicago to Montana, their poor judgment leads to being marooned in a blizzard. The couple freezes to death, and Alex is mortally injured with frostbite and hypothermia. Thankfully, there’s a euphoric reunion with Spencer in the snow (Sheridan truly knows how to satisfy his viewers before adding a bittersweet twist of the knife). But Alex’s injuries are too much. She gives birth, but her death is inevitable. Instead of undergoing a last-ditch surgery to amputate her frostbitten limbs, she chooses to spend the last moments of her life with her newborn baby, John, and husband.

Spencer is fated to be haunted by Alex’s memory for the rest of his life. Though not before killing the man he blames for her death, the person who forced his rapid return to Montana, Timothy Dalton’s robber baron Whitfield.

This is all as operatic as it sounds, the emotions as heightened as they could possibly be — every one of Season 2’s episodes was directed by Ben Richardson, in one of the great feats of marathon directing in recent memory. The series’ final scene finds Spencer, 45 years later, joining Alex in the afterlife for a heavenly waltz (in what appears to be the ballroom of the ocean liner where they were separated). And yet it’s the quiet moments that will stick with viewers, too, especially Harrison Ford’s Jacob Dutton, who got to meet Alex before her death — Ford had never acted opposite Schlaepfer and Sklenar until the shoot for the final episode, because their characters never meet until then — describing Alex to Helen Mirren’s Cara. That scene is maybe the finest acting of Ford’s career.

There’s so much to process here, so many emotions to work through, and IndieWire was able to speak to both Sklenar and Schlaepfer — breakout stars if ever there are any — to unpack all that we, and viewers of the Paramount+ show, are feeling.

IndieWire: The final episode is just so heartbreaking. Alexandra and Spencer’s relationship has been so defined by survival every step of the way. For Alex to accept her fate in this way, to accept death, and with such peace and purpose, had such a poetic quality to it. Julia, what do you make of where Alex is at the end?

Schlaepfer: Everything that Alex does throughout Season 2 is all out of a mother’s love and out of fighting to keep her baby alive and bring her family to Bozeman.

At the end, when she gives birth to that baby and has pretty much expended all of her life force doing so, the only thing that she wants to do for the last minutes, hours, seconds of her life is make sure that that baby stays alive and that baby will be OK. That decision she makes is just really what every decision Alexandra makes is born out of, which is love and this selfless protection for the people in her life.

She’s at peace with it. She’s OK knowing that she’s done what she believes a mother should do and what she really wants to do. She knows that she’ll be OK because she kept their family together and alive.

Spencer hasn’t ever struck us as a character who would necessarily second-guess or doubt his previous actions all that much. But in this case, I could see that maybe. Do you think that Spencer will think, “Oh, I wish I had done something differently along the way,” to avoid Alex’s fate?

Sklenar: Absolutely. Once he decides that he needs to get home in Season 1, he’s dead-fast convicted at that point. He’s a protector. That’s in him, and he wants to fight for and protect the people that he loves, and it’s an inherently masculine trait — the best form of it. He’s very much that and rooted in that as he feels it’s his responsibility. It’s driven by love.

But he ultimately fails. He fails in protecting the most important person in his life, and he does blame himself for that. I think that he carries it around for the rest of his life. Any man in that position would. I mean, I’m incredibly hard on myself and … my stakes aren’t that high. Shit that I carry around that I shouldn’t carry around. My wife didn’t die giving birth to my child because I didn’t get to her in time. I can’t imagine what that would feel like. I mean, especially someone whose entire identity is rooted in protecting and showing up for their family.

One of the things that makes me saddest is that Alex has been on this extraordinary journey by herself; all of these horrific things that have happened to her. I don’t think she had time to tell Spencer about any of it there at the end, and so Spencer will never know about any of this. Is there some way that he might find out, do you think? Or is it just going to be this great, unspoken thing that will never be known?

Schlaepfer: Wow. Yeah, I had never thought of that. That’s so true. No one really will know what she went through because the only people that she told the entire saga to were Paul and Hillary, and they’re gone.

If Spencer really wanted to dig up Ellis Island records and things like that, he probably could. But I don’t think that would help him in any way. At the end of the day, I think he sees the physical toll that it has taken on her when he finds her and certainly knows and could probably put some pieces together of how difficult her journey would have been alone traveling across the world. I mean, he’s a big, strong lion hunter, and he had a difficult journey across the world himself. One can only imagine what Alex’s was.

So the minute details, yeah, those are lost. Those are lost. Those are somewhere far, far away, where Alex is. Maybe when he joins her in the afterlife, they’ll chat about it. She’ll fill him in.

Spencer’s showdown with Whitfield is so interesting. That Spencer wants Whitfield to say Alex’s name is a really interesting character detail. Why do you think Spencer wants that at that moment?

Sklenar: Well, he’s fighting for any sense of vindication he can get, and he knows that he’ll never get it fully. He does feel like this man must know the weight of his actions, and what he’s taken away [from Spencer], and what he’s caused before he puts a bullet in his head. Even though Whitfield’s not going to live with it, just the acknowledgment of [what he has taken from Spencer], I think, is the only thing Spencer will ever get, and he has got to get at least that. But it is also tragic because he knows in that moment this is futile. It’s not going to heal anything actually or fix anything.

The dialogue was way more [initially]. There was a whole thing that I say, and then ultimately, it just wasn’t necessary. It took the significance, it explained away why I [want him to] say her name as opposed to just telling him to say her name. I had a whole chunk of dialogue there where I explain why. It’s way more impactful in the edit. It’s obvious why I’m there and why I want to kill this guy, so I don’t need to explain it.

I love that Taylor’s not precious about having that dialogue cut. I guess he does adopt a less-is-more approach ultimately?

Sklenar: Yeah, for everything. You want the most effective dose, and that’s the most effective dose in that moment. His writing is so specific, and I mean, literally everything we say is exactly as it is on the page. There’s no ad-libs. There’s no adding the’s or and’s or but’s or rewording anything. It’s literally verbatim as it is on the page. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s taken away.

We’ve had moments, though, where I’ve had a line, and I’m like, “I don’t think this is necessary.” That’s the most that’ll happen. Yeah, and that’s just an example of that. It’s about the emotional life, and you don’t need to explain things.

I’m curious about the way that Taylor controls the flow of information about your characters. When did you find out that this would be Alex’s ultimate fate?

Schlaepfer: It’s always different. You never know when you’re going to get a call from Taylor Sheridan, but he had written [Season 2 Episodes] 1 and 2, and then he called me and explained what he wanted to do with Ellis Island and asked if I would be game for that because it was going to be brutal. He said the rest of the season was probably going to be pretty brutal. I was like, “Let’s go. Let’s go for it. Let’s dive on in.”

And then I didn’t get anything for a long time because we had the strike. Nobody was writing. And then one day, out of the blue, a long time after that, I just get an email of the entire rest of the scripts and a text from Taylor saying, “Just sent you the scripts. Call me when you’re done.” I was like, “OK.” I just locked myself in my hotel room I was in and read those for the entirety of the day. And then I texted him just like, “Thank you. I just finished. I can’t…” Because I was still trying to compose myself. And then he just calls me, and I was like, “Oh, hey,” just weeping. And then he was trying to talk logistics with me about, “OK, so we’re going to have to map out Alex’s journey physically with what she’s going through.” I was like, “Taylor, thank you so much, but I cannot talk about this right now.” He laughed at me. He was like, “OK, I’ll call you later.”

It’s great. He cares so much about these characters and he wrote these beautiful things for us and talked to me a little bit about it. But then pretty much after that, he just set us free. We didn’t hear from him for most of the season. He just trusted us. That was really cool and empowering as well to just be like, “Well, we can’t mess it up, and I hope he likes it.” But it was incredible. I mean, it was the greatest gift of my life was this character and her journey. As an actor, it’s just the dream to dig into these kinds of things. It was the most challenging thing I have ever done as an actor, but also probably the thing I’m most proud of.

I can only think of just a handful of movies or TV shows where the main characters only really meet at the very end of the entire saga. And so for Alex and Spencer to only meet Jacob in the very last episode, it’s just remarkable. Did you do anything to mark the occasion essentially that you and Harrison were finally having a scene together?

Sklenar: I don’t prep the whole show or the whole movie [in advance]. And then I don’t look at shooting schedules anymore because it trips me out, so I don’t really know what I’m filming until I show up that day. I asked Jules when we were at dance rehearsal for the heaven scene, and it was like a running joke. I was like, “Would you know what I’m filming tomorrow?” She was like, “Oh yeah, you work with Harrison tomorrow. And Timothy Dalton. Oh, it’s the scene where you kill Whitfield. It’s the finale scene.” I was like, “No. I’m shooting that in Montana in two months. What are you talking about?” She’s like, “No, no, you’re shooting the exterior in Montana in two months. You’re shooting the interior,” because the scene itself takes place inside, “you’re doing that tomorrow at 6:00 a.m.” I was like, “Oh, damn. Oh, OK.” I started to sweat a little bit on that one.

Yeah, that was a really cool experience. I’ll never have it again. I mean, the chances that I’ll work with Harrison Ford again are pretty slim, or Timothy Dalton for that matter. To have both of them in the same scene [is] something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Such a special and unique experience. It really is.

Schlaepfer: I think just the knowledge that I was able to work with somebody like Harrison Ford was enough for me.

It was funny. My mom kept being like, “Get a picture with Harrison.” I was like, “Mom, I’m making a show with Harrison.”

Sklenar: “I’m in the scenes! I’m in the scenes!”

Schlaepfer: It’s just so surreal, and they are the coolest, kindest people.

Sklenar: Yeah, they are.

Schlaepfer: A couple of us would go out to meals with Timothy Dalton a little bit. Gosh, he’s just a sweetheart. And then Harrison is just… Gosh, I mean, he is a legend for a reason. He’s so kind and gracious and giving and funny. The scene that I shot with him first was my birth scene, and he just like… I was really excited to be like, “OK, this set belongs to Harrison. I can’t wait to observe how he works.” He gave me the space and he took care of me in such a fatherly way, both me and Alex. We both, I think, at that point we’re broken down and needed that energy in a way that I don’t even think I realized. I mean, it was a special, special day. He is such a generous actor.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around how lucky we have been on this project. I didn’t get to work with her, but just being around Helen Mirren, again, one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet. She’s so cool and so funny. It’s just, I mean, how lucky are we?

The season finale of “1923” premiered Sunday, April 6.