Warning: This post contains spoilers for the 1923 finale.
You don’t know until you know, but Julia Schlaepfer definitely had a feeling about how her 1923 character’s story would end.
The actress, 30, spent all of season 2 suffering alongside her character, Alex, wife to Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar), as she made the treacherous journey cross-country to Montana to reunite with her lost love. In the April 6 series finale, that journey came to a heartbreaking close, as Spencer rescued his stranded beloved from the Wyoming elements, only for her to succumb to the complications of her frostbite.
Schlaepfer tells PEOPLE she “always had a feeling” that Alex would die. “Before we started filming season 1, when Taylor [Sheridan] took us to dinner, I literally sat next to him and I was like, ‘I’m dying, aren’t I?’ Like, ‘I’m going to die.'”
Sheridan, 54, who wrote and created the Yellowstone prequel series, told Schlaepfer at the time, “I don’t know yet. You might not. I don’t know,” she recalls. “I think he did have a couple different versions in his head. No one knew. No one knew for sure. I don’t even think he did for a long time.”
Julia Schlaepfer as Alexandra Dutton in “1923” season 2. Lo Smith/Paramount+.
“I had this feeling. I don’t know why. I think I just had a feeling that that’s how it would go,” she says.
Still, “Nothing can prepare you for reading it for the first time, or seeing it, or, especially, performing it. That hit different.”
Sklenar echoes what Schlaepfer says about actually performing the final scene, which sees Spencer spend the night in a hospital bed with Alex and their newborn son, John, only to wake up and find her dead beside him.
“I was super emotional. I think I was probably too emotional most of the time, genuinely,” he tells PEOPLE of filming those final moments. “Especially when she actually dies… I was a f—— mess. I mean, I’m a snotty crier, so it’s not pretty. It’s ugly, and there’s a lot of snot coming down, so it’s a whole thing.”
Julia Schlaepfer as Alexandra in “1923” season 2. Lauren Smith/Paramount+
He continues, “Me, as Brandon, I was walking in that room and just see her laying there with the baby and the arms [and] legs wrapped up, I just lose my s— as soon as I take my hat off.”
Schlaepfer says that there’s “a point earlier than everybody else” that Alex realizes her fate, too.
“I think she knows what the reality of her situation is. And I think also she makes a choice, you know? She makes a choice for her family and for her baby. And she’s going to spend the remaining minutes, seconds, hours of her life that she has making sure her baby stays alive, even if that means she doesn’t … Oh gosh, it’s horrible, isn’t it?”
“It’s so brutal,” Sklenar, 34, says. “It’s so f—— brutal.”
Julia Schlaepfer as Alexandra and Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton in “1923” season 1. Emerson Miller/Paramount+
There’s a meaning to the sacrifice Alex makes, though, and it’s all in the name of her and Spencer’s son. “I know people are going to be so upset because she does suffer so much. But you know, I think her ultimate sacrifice at the end, in giving her life, just shows how strong she is. And you know, it’s such a testament to who she is.”
As she comes to terms with the reality that 1923 is over, Schlaepfer says, “I feel like I put so much of who Julia is into Alex, so it feels like I’ve lost a piece … Like I’ve lost myself in this.”
“I had to lay Alex to rest, and that’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life, for sure,” she adds.
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The 1923 finale is now streaming on Paramount+.
