Back when Taylor Sheridan originally established the Dutton family through Yellowstone, little did he know that he was soon going to spawn two more stunning sequels that would surpass even the success of the original Western masterpiece. To say the least, out of the two prequels that followed, 1883 is still widely regarded as the best spin-off of the original series by fans.
However, as exceptional as this drama was to witness, the spin-off prequel from 2021 wasn’t the easiest to bring to life. If anything, it was made through an incredibly gruelling process tiring enough to wear the entire cast and crew out. In fact, it even led to Faith Hill, one of the most prominent actors in the series, screaming the choicest line of profanities in public out of exasperation!
Yellowstone Prequel 1883 Had Everything Against it
The grimly grinding process that the cast and crew had to go through just to shoot Taylor Sheridan‘s 1883 was nothing short of sheerly exhausting. While the show itself depicts a rather pitiless perspective of the immigrants’ experience on the Oregon Trail that followed the events of the Civil War, the behind-the-scenes situation was even worse to get over with.
For a six-month-long shoot that started in August 2021 and concluded in January 2022, “it was one of the most grueling projects they’d ever worked on,” as many actors confessed in an interview with The Atlantic. If anything, while the characters not being able to make it out alive was one thing, the cast and crew faced a harder time as pretty much everything was against them.
According to what director Christina A. Voros, one of the trusted individuals from Sheridan’s “inner circle”, confessed during the same interview:
Everything was against us. Time was against us. Weather was against us. COVID was against us. It was sprawling to a degree that I don’t think any of us truly understood.
![A still of Isabel May as Elsa Dutton in 1883 [Credit: Paramount Network]](https://fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/08113316/1883-%E2%80%93-A-still-of-Isabel-May-as-Elsa-Dutton-Credit-Paramount-Network.jpg)
During that time, a whole new variant of COVID was spiritedly making its way out into the wild, and things were looking darker than ever. Just like how Voros said, everything seemed to be working against them as the cast and crew begrudgingly passed day after day of the strenuous shoot of what resulted in one of the most epic Western pieces of all time.
But while the initial days and mid-way period of the six-month-long shooting process was one thing, the real damage came by when the closing of the filming was right around the corner and the crewmates were drained to their bones. If anything, it was so severe that even actress Faith Hill couldn’t help but scream out the choicest of lines out of sheer exhaustion at the situation.
Faith Hill Lost Her Calm While Working on 1883
While the situation was already as bleak as it was while the shoot continued on the land Sheridan owns near his ranch in Weatherford, Texas, the actors’ utterly worn-out reactions further emphasized the cruelness that the situation was imbuing on them. To say the least, they were tired of fighting the elements, and some of them ended up having the most unexpected outbursts.
Like Faith Hill, who played Margaret Dutton, the wife of James Dillard Dutton, on the series. While trying to get her lines right as she discussed her fictional daughter’s future with her real-life husband and James portrayer Tim McGraw in the series, she eventually gave up and screamed out in frustration:
F— me in the a—!
Even as McGraw sympathetically tried to comfort her, everyone pretty much understood her situation because they were all tired of the way the series of events was unfolding for them. But on the positive side of it, all of their hard work most certainly seems to have paid off, especially considering the 89% critical and 83% audience score the show holds on Rotten Tomatoes.
You can stream 1883 on Prime Video as of August 17, 2024.
