Helen Mirren joined Yellowstone prequel 1923 without reading a single script

Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in Yellowstone: 1923 — (Image credit: Paramount Plus)

Helen Mirren says she and Harrison Ford signed onto Yellowstone prequel 1923 without seeing any scripts.

"For the first time in my life, I wasn’t given a script. I had no idea what it was going to be, and likewise for Harrison [Ford]," Mirren told Deadline. "We were asked to participate, and you do what you do as an actor and say, 'Lovely, sounds really interesting. I’d love to read the script?' But there is no script."

Ford and Mirren play Jacob and Cara Dutton in the early 20th century. Per the official synopsis, it focuses on "pandemics, historic drought, the end of Prohibition, and the Great Depression all plague the mountain west, and the Duttons who call it home."

"Taylor likes to write for the people that he knows are going to play the role," Mirren explained. "That was a combination of flattering and at the same time sort of rather nerve-wracking because I’d actually never met Taylor Sheridan and maybe when he meets me, he won’t want to write for me."

Mirren went on to recount what an "amazing moment" it was when she finally received the script: "The Irish thing is something I added personally. I thought about how when you see Westerns, you don’t see enough people with accents even though they were all recent immigrants. Apart from that, honestly, it’s amazing writing, and what’s on the page, it arrives and it’s kind of perfect. It’s extraordinary."

Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for GamesRadar+ based in New York City. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent's Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.