Interview
Can Spencer & Alex’s Love Survive in ‘1923’? Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer Tease Rough Season 2 (VIDEO)
Love is the thing that keeps Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) and Alex (Julia Schlaepfer) alive in 1923 Season 2. The couple has been separated for four to five months when the season begins, Sklenar tells Swooon, and the obstacles rear their nasty heads from dawn till dusk for this pair as they embark on their solo journeys home.
1923 returns after a two-year wait this Sunday, February 23, on Paramount+. When Season 2 begins, a cruel winter brings new challenges and unfinished business to Jacob (Harrison Ford) and Cara (Helen Mirren) back at Dutton ranch. With harsh conditions and adversaries threatening to end the Dutton legacy, Spencer embarks on an arduous journey home, racing against time to save his family in Montana. Meanwhile, Alex sets off on her own harrowing transatlantic journey to reunite with Spencer.
Spencer is working on an Italian cargo ship to raise money for his ticket home in the premiere. Alex, meanwhile, begins her journey to and across America with the help of a friend. Spencer and Alex’s love for each other is their due north as they struggle to reunite in Montana, and time is of the essence as Spencer’s family desperately awaits his return during the bitter winter that threatens their lives while the villainous Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton) threatens their livelihoods.
The road home is paved with danger. Sklenar and Schlaepfer both tell Swooon that all Spencer and Alex want is a peaceful life on the Dutton ranch after the trials and tribulations of their early relationship. They were attacked by lions, nearly trampled by an elephant, and survived a shipwreck in Season 1. Taylor Sheridan‘s only throwing more hard times at them in Season 2. The adventures have been grand, but they’d love to say goodbye to the intensity.
A so-called normal life is “what he wants more than anything,” Sklenar says in the video interview above. “He’s had a really difficult life, and he’s always fighting against something and fighting himself and resisting of love and and normalcy and routine. All he wants is to just be with her on that ranch and just, you know, go herd cattle and have a family.”
Schlaepfer says English nobility be damned — Alex is ready to “get in and do the dirty work” of running a ranch! “They’ve had so many adventures, but at the end of the day, they just really love each other and absolutely I could see Alex riding around on a horse,” she shares. “That’s so exciting to her and that’s her spirit. She grew up very privileged and was very fortunate, too, but she also was a caged bird. She’s been freed now. She’s freed herself and opened herself up to a lot of challenges.”
To Alex and to Schlaepfer, the “big sky country” of Montana is “the epitome of freedom.” The strength that this life with Spencer brings out of Alex makes her love him even more. She could never have envisioned this life of adventure. Being with him has fulfilled a dream Alex didn’t know she had. “It’s proving that she would go to the ends of the earth for him,” Schlaepfer says.
Find out more about Spencer and Alex’s cinematic love story in the full video interview above. Plus, if you’re a Yellowstone mega-fan, make sure to check out TV Guide Magazine’s Beth Forever special issue.
1923, Season 2 Premiere, Sunday, February 23, Paramount+
