Helen Mirren might be a Dame, but to Harrison Ford, she may as well be one of the boys.
The iconic actors reunite onscreen again in season 2 of 1923 as couple Jacob and Cara Dutton, and they’re letting PEOPLE in on their off-set dynamic.
Mirren, 79, is “what we used to call a broad,” Ford, 82, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “And there’s no disparagement in calling a Dame a broad.”
“It means that she’s a woman that has the bandwidth to hang with men — not just to be a lady with them, but to actually hang with them,” he says of his costar. “She’s a real cool lady.”
Mirren is on the same page. “We would sit around together and shoot the s— off-set,” she says.
“Harrison is not like an ‘I’m going to my trailer’ person. I don’t think I ever knew him [or] remember him going, ever, to his trailer. We hang around on the set and we do our thing,” she notes.
“We had a good time,” Ford agrees. “A good time hanging out together as well as working together.”
In the long gap between season 1, which premiered in December 2022, and season 2, which premieres Sunday, Feb. 23 on Paramount+, Ford and Mirren admit they didn’t exactly stay in touch — but their onscreen chemistry didn’t suffer for it.
“Harrison and I have a weird thing,” Mirren says, reflecting on their first project together, 1986’s The Mosquito Coast, and their enduring connection. “It’s like your best friend in college that you haven’t seen for like 30 years, but [once] — you’re back, [it’s] exactly [the same], only even better, actually. Even better.”
Ford is on the same page. “The reality is that we met 40 or 50 years ago when we were doing Mosquito Coast. And so we meet now, 40 years later, I’ve been told that she’s already signed up [for 1923]. She’s been told I’m already signed up. For me, the main attraction was a chance to work with her again.”
Though they didn’t really stay in touch between seasons, sliding right back into their dynamic as the Dutton family matriarch and patriarch who are laying it all on the line to protect their ranch in season 2 was pretty seamless.
“When there’s a fit, you feel it,” he says. “It’s just a perfect bit of casting.”
