When actors spend a number of months filming a show or movie together, the characters they portray begin to become a part of them, as they invest so much time into the role.
Tim McGraw and Faith Hill have both been very vocal about how much their portrayals of James and Margaret Dutton on 1883 have impacted them, along with a number of other actors on the show.
With that being said, the two sat down for an interview with Entertainment Weekly recently, and weighed in on the scene that impacted them the most emotionally.
And the scene?
When their daughter Elsa (Isabel May) died after getting hit with a poisoned arrow. The scene occurred in the finale, when the group was attacked by Native Americans, who wrongfully assumed they had previously attacked their tribe.
Hill, who is a mother of daughters herself, explained how emotional the scene made her. Of course, she had to go to some dark places to get into character, but thinking about her own kids was completely off limits.
She said through the tears:
“There’s a few places within the series that I seriously can not even speak about because I had to go to such places to get what was needed that I just can’t access that. You know, I won’t allow myself to think about my own children… I just can’t. I can’t.
I just don’t think in that way, or use that for anything, inspiration or…”
She also added that while she was just working on a television show, parents are tragically forced to say goodbye to their children every day in the real world. And in light of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the conversation becomes even harder to ponder.
“That was tough (Elsa’s death), what she said. ‘See you in the valley.’
The thought of many families have dealt with that, throughout millennia but right now, the world is in a challenging place, and there’s a lot of that kind of departure that’s happening in real time, in real life.
And I can’t imagine not being with my child in their final moments of life, ever. So it was tough… the hardest part was not just completely breaking down.”
McGraw, who admits he’s an easy crier, weighed in on filming the scene:
“We shot the scene maybe three or four times. The very first time, Isabel and I both were just a blubbering mess.
The scene that we ended up using… and I think it was the next to last take we took… she’s laying on my lap and we’re getting ready to shoot and she just looks up at me and says, ‘What’s the thing you love most about your daughters?’
And then they said, ‘action,’ and it just tore me apart.”
Watch the full interview below:
