[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for 1923 Season 2 Episode 2, “The Rapist Is Winter.”]
Dexter star Jennifer Carpenter made her 1923 debut in Season 2 Episode 2, streaming on Paramount+ as of Sunday, March 2. She plays Mamie Fossett, based on the real-life U.S. Marshal of the same name from this era. As one of the first female U.S. Marshals in history, Fossett was a trailblazing figure. Carpenter and 1923‘s take on the historical figure is a fiery but calm presence with an unclouded vision of justice. She had no issue shutting down the sexist (and murderous and racist and generally awful…) Marshal Kent (Jamie McShane) in her debut scene, in which Kent and Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché) were in Texas asking for help in their hunt for Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves).
“You patrol this territory, serving warrants, making arrests, why do I find that hard to believe?” Kent asked Mamie in the episode. “Because you’re a bigot,” she replied without missing a beat, “living in the wrong century.” She warned him that “this is not Montana” when he said things were different in his home state.
Teonna is wanted for the murder of the nuns at the abusive residential school in Season 1. She did kill those people, but it was the culmination of a long stretch of physical, mental, and sexual abuse at the religious school that forced Native American girls to assimilate to white American culture. Mamie is now assisting in the search for Teonna, but Carpenter tells TV Insider that she would likely sympathize with Teonna’s plight. Could she be an ally for Teonna after recognizing the moral failures of Marshal Kent?
“I don’t think Mamie is out for alliances,” Carpenter explains. “I think that the alignment and the alliances that she needs, she has. And that’s why her spine is so erect and her focus is focused like a laser beam on the task at hand.”
Still, Carpenter says Mamie has the capacity to understand the nuance of Teonna’s situation should she ever learn the full truth of these events (Mamie and Teonna have yet to cross paths). But that might not stop her from intervening in the Indigenous woman’s potential arrest. This Marshal is focused on pure justice.
“While she can compute it, I don’t know that she feels like she has to align with it,” Carpenter says. “It can be present and it can all be true. But I think that the structure of the new law of the new government and setting a new standard is what’s paramount. And it sort of trumps any individual’s feeling. It’s about erecting a new way that people can count on.”
This also applies to Kent. The Marshal brutally murdered an Indigenous child by trampling him with his horse in the Season 2 premiere to send a message to the native community that protecting Teonna would result in dire consequences. Even the evil Father Renaud, who condoned abuse at the residential school and carried some out himself, was horrified by Kent’s actions. Carpenter says Mamie won’t hesitate to hold anyone accountable.
1923, Sundays, Paramount+