When Paramount+’s 1923 returns for Season 2 Sunday, the Dutton family will weather twin storms: the relentless Montana winter, and an even more relentless Donald Whitfield, who’s still hell-bent on acquiring Jake and Cara’s ranch by any means possible.

The mounting stress (and dwindling resources) will weigh heavily on the Dutton elders, who still hold out hope that Spencer will return home in time to help them save the place. Indeed, Helen Mirren‘s Cara continues to write her nephew letters despite having no assurance that they’re reaching him. (Need a refresher? Check out our Season 1 finale recap.)

When the topic of Cara’s correspondence came up during my recent chat with Mirren and co-star Harrison Ford, who plays Jake, Ford pointed out that the missives were Cara’s way of making sense of what’s happening to her family.

“I think, in a perhaps slightly over-poetic way, I think she does, she needs to do this, and that she’s doing it for herself as much as she’s doing it in the hope that he will come,” Ford says in the video above. “She’s making sense of this, and she’s looking for a way out of it. It’s like her version of a journal.”

Mirren nods. “Like a diary, yeah. It is.”

He continues, “And it’s a spectacular insight into the mind of a woman that [series creator] Taylor Sheridan has imagined… Extraordinary. Helen’s part, all of the other female parts, are filled with passion, and purpose and tragedy.”

What follows is an insightful back-and-forth between two top-of-their-craft actors about gender stereotypes, vulnerability, the ubiquity of death in 1920s Montana and the special connection that seals Cara and Jake’s bond.