In 1923, Jennifer Carpenter plays Mamie Fossett, a U.S. Deputy Marshall who’s approached by Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché) and the ruthless Marshal Kent (Jamie McShane) for help with finding the young indigenous woman who murdered two nuns in season one.
For Carpenter — last seen playing Dexter‘s poor, tormented sister in the eponymous Showtime drama — it’s been the opportunity of a lifetime to play a real-life law dog in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel.
“I feel reinvigorated as an actor,” she tells Deadline. “I told Taylor I had the pleasure of watching the first season finale, and I was just so overwhelmed even knowing what was going to happen. I was like, ‘you don’t understand. This is an 8-year old’s dream. The 8-year-old who said to my parents, ‘I want to do this for a living,’ and they said, ‘sure, as long as you don’t ask for money.’ I’m brand new. It put so much, I want to say gasoline, but it’s so much more romantic than that in my tank. I’m full. I’m ready.”
Here, the actress talks about finding inspiration for the role and whether Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves) will rue the day when Mamie finds her.
DEADLINE How was the role pitched to you?
JENNIFER CARPENTER It was pitched in seven pages that were sent to my inbox. Of course I did. But then I didn’t hear anything for a while. And then I got a note back with one question: ‘gangs.’ In that first scene, they say she’s a renegade out with her gangs, and the note was about that one word, gangs. So I interpreted it the best I could. I sent the tape back and then they said, ‘do you want to come to Texas and be in the room to test?’ It was one step at a time, and then it felt like a lot when you look at the content, how much space she takes up within the season. It felt like a lot of auditioning, and I loved it. I loved that what I thought was a secondary character was so important that they would put that much time and effort into casting it. I was also a cross country runner when I was 7, so it was a perfect mix of great writing and competition.
DEADLINE Wait, you started running cross country at 7?
CARPENTER My sister said, if you want to make friends, you’ve got to be on a team. So I picked the most solitary sport.
DEADLINE How do you feel about doing self-tapes these days?
CARPENTER Oh, I love it. I have no problem with auditioning. I’ll do it in the room. I’ll get on a plane and pay my own way. I want the part, even if I get it for three minutes, four minutes. I have a point of view and I love to be invited to the conversation. And I don’t take it personally when I don’t get it at this point. I’m sure there was a time when I did.
DEADLINE What can we expect of Mamie Fossett, who was actually a real person?
CARPENTER So little is known about Mamie, or at least that I could find on the worldwide web. She was one of the first US female marshalls in the union at the time, and she and another woman went on one raid together to pull a criminal back. they didn’t knock on houses and ask if they could sleep there for the night. They made their own camps, they killed their own food, they put him in handcuffs, and they got him back. There was a lot of meat on those bones.
What I thought about was how she signed up for the deadliest job available at the time. I imagine she probably came from a large family, like so many did, and watched her brothers earn certain freedoms just because of their sex, and she coveted some of that. And I imagine a lot of tragedy was in there too, because what woman moves from comforts to the grit of the wild west? So that made me think that she must have a relationship with God or the creator as Teonna would say. So she has a charge as one of God’s children, and then she has this very thin law that she’s meant to make thicker, that she’s meant to make matter. So that’s where I operated from. And I imagine if you have a sense of spirituality inside you and you have a sense of a moral compass, then you can treat the outside world with the same respect and understanding. That is how I lived within this show under the Texas heat with my beautiful horse and my costume. I think she is so powerful in her stillness because she’s patient enough to let people react to her first and reveal themselves.
DEADLINE And be sexist.
CARPENTER If that’s who they are, and if that’s the information they want me to have about them, if that’s where they want to start the conversation, that’s fine. I’ll help them put their turn signal on and bring it back to what the subject at hand is. Wait, not a turn signal. I guess it would be like click your horse a little on the left side.
DEADLINE How did you, quite literally, find Mamie’s voice?
CARPENTER Ralph Zito was my vocal coach and teacher at Julliard when I was there. About a month ago, I reached out to him to do some private work. I have to say the environment really helped. The weight of the heat really helped with the awareness that I didn’t want to sound, like, up higher in my register. I don’t know. It was a bunch of small moving parts that hopefully came together when the cameras were on. That’s all I can hope for. I mean, when you look at how epic 1923 was in season one and season two, the scripts are wildly thin. So it was more about turning a psychology into a behavior. She’s so quiet, so still. But I felt like she was just the richest one on the page, even though she doesn’t express it to the audience every time she’s there.
DEADLINE So you were out in Texas the whole time. Were you outdoors most of the time?
CARPENTER Most of the time, yeah. Even the indoor scenes were painful because you’re locked inside that heat. But I adored it. One wonderful thing that happened is we were in a small Texas town that they had dressed to make it look like it was 1923. There was a lightning strike. So every time the lightning strikes, you have to go inside for 30 minutes to make sure that everybody will be safe. I sat on the porch, so technically I was under cover, but I was the only one out there. And it was as if I were sitting in 1923 on the porch of the store, and it felt like absolute time travel. There were so many moments that were just such a gift for me personally. And even about pacing. It felt like a lesson to me. Here I am away from home, and it was for something. I’m just bursting with gratitude that I got to be the one to do it, and I would’ve been in background.
DEADLINE So how does she feel about the priest and his goddamn henchman that he’s traveling with? What does she think about those two?
CARPENTER I think I have instantaneous judgments about it. And it irks me. It irks me to watch him dance around in his costume. But my first thought was to have compassion for him. So that’s where you start. And then as they layer on their own wrap sheet, then it starts to move over into the law side. Now I’m called to action and I can arm myself and load my weapons because I have a stronger calling or a clearer voice into the one he claims to have.
DEADLINE Will your character be prominent for the rest of the season?
CARPENTER I’ll be in it until the end.
DEADLINE I’m assuming you will remain hot on the trail for Teonna. Are you going to be mean to her when you find her?
CARPENTER I’m going to be honest with her. That’s one great thing about Taylor’s writing. It’s honest. He doesn’t cut corners. He spoils you. I think when I was watching the first season, I had no idea I’d ever have a chance to be a part of it. I felt spoiled. And I was like, how are they paying anybody? Wait until you get to the finale. I knew what was going to happen and it ruined me. And I went willingly. All of a sudden there was adrenaline everywhere. I didn’t know where that was coming from. Tears were falling out of my face and nobody had shot a frame. And then when I watched the finale, I had this moment, even before the credits rolled, I thought, oh my God, I feel closer to my ancestors. Could one of my distant relatives moved like that? They worked so hard for that small luxury to experience New York. I’m just thinking of the Ellis Island episode. I haven’t had a reaction to film or television in a very long time that made me closer to myself or my bloodline or my own personal history. That’s why I wish I had a better word than gratitude, because it doesn’t encompass everything that I feel. It’s like I’m 8 years old again, wanting to be an actor.
