Doing his own stunts.
1923 star Brandon Sklenar, who plays Spencer Dutton, had a heck of a time filming the most recent season, and in a conversation with actress Sydney Sweeney for Interview this week, he talked about doing his own stunts for the show.
And he actually split his head open with a helmet while shooting a scene… it sounds incredibly painful, and the way he described it was pretty wild, and they ended up having to superglue it together because it was right under his eye:
“Splitting my own head open with a helmet shooting a scene in 1923. That was pretty dumb. I was having to slam it down on this dude’s neck as he’s trying to kill me. And when we actually shot it, I had the helmet far enough in front of me to have some clearance.
Then we had to shoot from his point of view, of me slamming it on his neck, and because of the angle I had to hold the helmet really close to me, and we had one shot, so the director told me to just go really ape-s-h*t on it. So I came up and hit myself right here under my eye and just totally split my head open they had to superglue it.”
For the sake of continuity, they had to use CGI to make it blend so you couldn’t see the wound or the scar for the rest of the season:
“[I have] a pretty good scar right next to another scar that I already had there. They had to CGI it into the other stuff we had already shot before, and now he just has this head wound the entire season if you look closely.”
It doesn’t sound like that’s going to deter him at all, though, because he loves using his body, adding that he grew up “fighting and doing construction”:
“I love using my body. I’m really good at it. I grew up fighting and doing construction. If I don’t use my body in some way, I feel pretty underutilized.”
For 1923, he did every single stunt except for one, which also featured his co-star Julia Schlaepfer (Alexandra Dutton), which actually sounded like possibly the easiest stunt he could’ve done throughout the show:
“I think Jake did one where he had to carry Julia up a fake snow embankment, and they were worried about my boots slipping out. But I did everything else, I’m pretty sure.”
Of course, the show just officially ended after the season 2 finale, though fans might be more confused now than they were before about the Dutton family tree… many fans believe the show confirmed in the final episode that Spencer Dutton was the grandfather of John Dutton III. Since Taylor Sheridan hasn’t been the best in continuity, fans feel like there was a huge mess up in this finale, given that it makes John Dutton III only a fourth generation of Duttons, and Tate would be the 6th.
You can read more about that HERE, but I think it’s pretty respectable for an actor do their own stunts, and even take a few licks and wounds to do it right.
