“Meet Jacob and Cara Dutton.”
Giddy up, Yellowstone fans: There’s a new couple running the ranch.
Dame Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford put on their best cowboy hats, dresses, and belt buckles for a series of new promotional photos for their upcoming Yellowstone spin-off, 1923. The first-look images feature Ford giving Mirren a kiss on the forehead as well as individual snapshots of the two veteran actors posed amid sprawling farmland.
The Instagram post’s caption reads: “Meet Jacob and Cara Dutton.”
Cast members of fellow Yellowstone spin-off 1883 all dropped into the comments section of the post to hoot and holler for the latest series in the franchise. Dawn Olivieri, Emma Malouff, and LaMonica Garrett all shared their excitement, with Eric Nelsen calling the snapshots “legendary.”
This new addition to the Yellowstone universe will feature Ford’s rugged Jacob and Mirren’s clever Cara leading the family through another tumultuous time period. It is set 40 years after the events of 1883, which followed John Dutton (Tim McGraw) and Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill) as they settled in Montana and founded the family ranch — and a little less than a century before John Dutton III (Kevin Costner) took over the ranch in the original series.
Ford called his character the hard-working “silverback” of the Duttons in a new interview with Vanity Fair. “He’s responsible for that branch of the family,” he said. “These are two people with a very strong bond to each other who are facing really complicated circumstances.”
Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren
Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren
| Credit: Mike Marsland/WireImage; Mike Marsland/WireImage
Mirren’s character Cara, an Irish immigrant, is similarly wise to the ways of the world. Together, the indomitable pair are unafraid to stand up for what they want.
“You need someone who is capable of making decisions, and hopefully making the right decisions, but at least making a decision and going with it — in other words, a leader,” Mirren told Vanity Fair. “That’s what has propelled them into this position of running the ranch, running the family, being the linchpin around whom, at this moment in time, the family revolves.”
Ford said the fictional couple, who have been married for a long time, have their lives “totally wrapped up in each other” when audiences meet them in the series. “There’s very little that sustains them other than themselves and the hard work and investment they put into their future and their family,” he said. “It is a tough life, and it’s full of not just physical challenges but moral ones as well.”
If that requires bending a few rules, then so be it. “The Duttons live by a code of behavior that they set for themselves and it requires complicated moral and ethical judgment,” Ford explained. “It’s not just the physical life that’s hard. The challenges that they face from modernity, the challenges to their way of life, to their freedom and the opportunities that they’ve enjoyed, is a big part of the story. The upcoming Depression and all of the pressures, economic and social, are leading up to this very volatile time in American history.”
1923 lands on Paramount+ on Dec. 18.
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