Darren Mann is also not ready to say goodbye to Jack Dutton.
In the sixth episode of 1923 season 2 on March 30, there was “death everywhere,” as the Canadian actor tells PEOPLE, including for his beloved character Jack, whose “wide-eyed view of the world ended up taking him out.”
Jack, the great-nephew of Jacob (Harrison Ford) and Cara (Helen Mirren), left his post defending the Dutton’s ranch to help his uncle who had left to stand guard at the Livingston train station, where Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) was due to make his long-awaited return.
Instead, Jack was met by two of Whitfield’s cronies who he mistakenly took for deputies and they shot him in cold blood twice.
“It’s so quick and fast,” Mann, 35, says of Jack’s death. “I think it’s Taylor [Sheridan]’s genius in his character development and writing of the unfortunate circumstance of how it goes down for good old Jack when he was just so trusting in everybody in this world.”
He says he was “angry, sad and frustrated” when he read the episode’s script and learned of his beloved character’s fate — there was no heads up from Sheridan or anyone else, he says — but he was admittedly not all that surprised.
“Signing up for a Taylor Sheridan show, I expected there would be some tragedy and some heartbreak and disappointment. That’s what makes his writing so great is it draws us in and we care so much about these characters,” Mann says.
“I fell in love with playing Jack, and I always hoped that he would get his redemption and avenge his father’s death and ride away into the sunset with his lady and raise a beautiful family, but that’s not how it always went, especially back then in that tough world,” he continues, referring to Jack’s wife Elizabeth (Michelle Randolph), who found out she was pregnant in a previous episode after weeks of strife for the couple.
“And yes, tragedy happened, so I was saddened as a fan of the show, and of course as a fan of Jack himself. But it wasn’t a complete surprise just given the world we’re playing in.”
Explaining the thought process behind Jack’s fateful decision to leave the ranch and head out to meet Jacob, Mann says, “He respects his family and their wishes and wanting to do what’s right by them and what they ask of him, but at the same time, he also feels a huge responsibility with his father now passed and Spencer not back yet, that, I’m supposed to be out there looking after Jacob. He’s not supposed to be out there without me.”
He continues of the heartbreaking storyline, “I feel like the message there with Jack is — he almost doesn’t fit into this dark world that they’re in right now and how intense and awful things are getting there in the ’20s. He’s just such a sweet soul, he’s trusting and he’s so face value. He takes things for what they are because that’s who he is. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and he says what he means and he means what he says, and he hopes that everyone else is doing the same.”
It’s “too bad,” Mann says. “You wish a guy like him could live on, a nice soul like that.”
When it came time to film the death scene, Mann admits he “felt very self-conscious” on set that day.
“I was questioning myself a lot that day, I think, just because Jack means so much to me and I wanted to make sure that I was giving that last scene as much as I could. So I was overthinking it a little, but all for the best reasons because I just so enjoy playing him, and I love that role and I love the show, so it was sad and emotional to do it.”
In the end, though, he says he was “very happy with how it went,” despite how Jack’s ending “ripped [his] heart out.”
“I loved playing Jack. Playing Jack was a dream come true for me. He’s such a fun character to get to sit inside of,” he says. “So I definitely mourned for him after he had passed. I wanted different for him. But that’s just the way the old cookie crumbles sometimes.”
New episodes of 1923 premiere Sundays on Paramount+.