1923 star Helen Mirren recently opened up about how she landed the role of Cara Dutton on the Yellowstone prequel. According to Mirren, when she first heard Yellowstone mastermind Taylor Sheridan had her in mind for the role, the script hadn’t been written yet.
“Can I read the script? There isn’t a script,” Mirren told Deadline. “Taylor likes to write for the people that he knows are going to play the role. So so that was sort of combination of flattering, but at the same time, sort of rather nerve wracking because I thought, well, I’ve actually never met Taylor Sheridan and, you know, maybe when he meets me, one want to write for me at all,” she quipped.
Of course, Sheridan agrred to meet the acting legend to discuss the part. “And so I said, Well, you know, maybe we should meet until you get to know who I am, you know, my sort of vibe if you like, and so, so I did meet I went to meet with him and and had a great evening with him.”
However, Mirren still didn’t know exactly how the character would be on the page. “But I had no idea. You know, who the character was or what the story was or anything really. So it was an amazing moment when the script I discovered, actually who I was playing,” she explained.
Helen Mirren brought an original element to the chracter of Cara Dutton
Even though Mirren loved the script, there was something she added to Cara that wasn’t on the page. “The Irish thing was a thing that I added personally,” Mirren explained. “I thought, we, you know, when you see westerns, you don’t see eye into my mind enough people with accents because they were all immigrants, recent immigrants. So it’s important to me to sort of bring that feeling in with the sort of Irish but apart from that, obviously, it’s amazing writing. And once on the page, it arrives, and it’s kind of perfect. It’s extraordinary.”
Mirren also touched on what it was like to work with Hollywood icon Harrison Ford. “I’ve worked with [Ford] before many many years ago,” she explained. “We played husband and wife that in the [1986] film called Mosquito Coast. You know he was massive star that he is now then as well.”
However, despite his superstardom, Mirren finds Ford accessible. It was as though no time had passed since they last worked together. “And so you know Harrison is very specific person in our history of film of acting on screen. He inhabits a very specific space. He’s he’s just such a beautiful person. I have to say, you know, he his and it was so great. It was as if that sort of 30 years had just hadn’t existed and here we were together again as husband and wife. I think he’s just fantastic.”