With just over a month before the much anticipated Yellowstone prequel, 1923, hits Paramount Plus, Vanity Fair has posted an exclusive first look at the series. The images show Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren reuniting for the first time since Peter Weir’s magnificent The Mosquito Coast in 1986. In the article, a lot of information about the show is revealed. If you watched Yellowstone and its prequel 1883, you’d know that John Dutton’s great-grandfather, James Dutton (Tim McGraw), seemed to meet a violent end sometime in the 1890s. This new prequel focuses on his brother, Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) and his wife, Cara (Helen Mirren), who are now the patriarch and matriarch of the sprawling ranch. James’s son, John Dutton Sr, is played by James Badge Dale, with him the father of Costner’s John Jr (in fact, John Sr. was previously played on Yellowstone by Dabney Coleman).
As explained in the article, Jacob and Cara have been married for forty years but were never able to have children. As Mirren explains, the two have “an incredible partnership where you can be honest with each other, and your love and support of each other is total, but at the same time, you are no longer blinded by love or by lust. You’re much more clear-eyed about your relationship, but the relationship becomes all the stronger for that very reason.”
As Ford adds, “there’s very little that sustains them other than themselves and the hard work and investment they put into their future and their family. It is a tough life, and it’s full of not just physical challenges but moral ones as well.”
The show apparently has much to do with the Dutton’s straddling the old and new world in the wake of 20th-century industrialization. Jacob still wears a gun on his hip and is ready to kill for his family. In the article, Vanity Fair suggests the antagonists are a group of rival ranchers led by Game of Thrones’ Jerome Flynn. Timothy Dalton was a recent addition to the cast, but it remains to be seen if he’ll be part of the first season, with the prequel confirmed as a two-season limited series.
Check out the images:
1923 premieres December 18th on Paramount Plus, and as die-hard Yellowstone fans, we’ll be watching (read our Season 5 premiere review here).