Brandon Sklenar is not the same person he was during season 1 of 1923 — and neither is his character.
The 34-year-old actor, who plays WWI vet turned African game hunter Spencer Dutton in the Yellowstone prequel series, tells PEOPLE he “felt way more” pressure in the show’s first season than he did for its long-awaited second installment.
“I didn’t know what it was,” he says of season 1, which premiered in December 2022. “I didn’t know who [Spencer] was, I didn’t know how he was going to sound, I didn’t know how he was going to feel, I didn’t know the tone of the show, really.”
“And then I had almost two years between season 1 and season 2 and did other projects and just grew as a human being over two years. I was [in] my early 30s — those are some big years developmentally,” he says. “I’m effectively a different man going into season 2 and therefore [Spencer] is.”
Sklenar, who starred in It Ends With Us in the gap between seasons, says season 2 has “an entirely different feeling.”
The upcoming episodes find Spencer amid his harrowing journey home to Montana, where his aunt Cara Dutton (Helen Mirren) and uncle Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) eagerly await his arrival to help defend their family’s ranch.
“[I] honestly didn’t feel much pressure in terms of an expectation,” Sklenar says of returning to set. But he did feel “a responsibility to do the best work” possible and “just pour every ounce of myself into it.”
“I was literally like, ‘I’m going to approach this like it’s the last thing I’m ever going to do,'” he shares.
“You have to leave no stone unturned because [Taylor Sheridan’s] words are just so good,” he continues. “And I was reading these episodes, I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be good.'”
This season is also an entirely different experience for Sklenar, both in terms of his character’s experience and his own, as Spencer and his wife Alex (Julia Schlaepfer) remain separated following the emotional season 1 finale.
“It was a trip,” he says of the separation from Schlaepfer, 29. “It was her and I every day for season 1 for five, almost six months.”
As a result of the separation from Alex, with whom Spencer is “a very specific version of himself,” Skelnar says season 2 “brings out different sides” of his character.
It also meant Sklenar was “working opposite different people all the time,” which was new too. “Getting to explore other parts of him through these other characters that come in and out was a lot of fun.”
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Season 2 of 1923 premieres Sunday, Feb. 23 on Paramount+.
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