Aminah Nieves and Cole Brings Plenty had ended the first season of 1923 with new opportunities for their characters, Teonna Rainwater and Pete Plenty Clouds, and their blossoming love story.
The first season of the hit Yellowstone prequel series was a breakout one for Nieves as it tracked her Indigenous character, Teonna, and her epic journey escaping a 1923-set Indian assimilation boarding school run by the Catholic Church where she was abused.
After everything she endured, the season ended with her reuniting with her father (played by Michael Spears) and beginning to fall in love with the son of the man who helped save her, Pete Plenty Clouds (played by the late Cole Brings Plenty). Her final scene featured the three of them riding off to Wyoming in hopes of escaping the priest (Sebastian Roché) and other men who are now hunting her in season two, which returned after two years on Sunday.
“More than anything, it gave everyone a chance to see her as a child, and it gave her a chance for her child self to show,” Nieves had told The Hollywood Reporter after the finale of the promise behind that emotional ending for both Teonna and her new relationship with Pete Plenty Clouds. “If she can have that one moment, that’s it. Yes, she’s getting away. But she could be herself for a second. She could breathe. And she could hug someone who feels familiar.”
Tragically, the actor who played Pete Plenty Clouds, Cole Brings Plenty, died about two months after that season finale released. After he was first reported missing following an alleged domestic violence incident, Cole was found dead three days later in Kansas at age 27. A cause of death was not revealed.
Cole was the nephew of Mo Brings Plenty, the American Indian affairs coordinator on both 1923 and Yellowstone, the latter on which he also is among the cast playing Mo, the right-hand man to Chief Thomas Rainwater (played by Gil Birmingham), a future relative to Teonna on the Yellowstone franchise tree.
It wasn’t known until the second season of 1923, which was released this past weekend, just how the Taylor Sheridan series would handle the character of Pete Plenty Clouds after Cole’s death. The show opened with a photo dedication to pay tribute to the late Cole, who went by “Coco.” Once the episode began, it quickly became clear that Pete and Teonna’s story would be continue.
Cast in Cole’s place was Jeremy Gauna, who appeared in Sheridan’s first Yellowstone prequel series, 1883, in a key role as the Native who shot, and ultimately killed Isabel May’s Elsa Dutton (who narrates 1923). More recently, Gauna appeared in Netflix’s recent American Primeval. The first episode sees Gauna as Pete remaining on the run with Teonna. But as they enjoy a break in being chased, the young pair spends a romantic night under the stars to solidify their romance.
“If I’m being completely transparent, in the beginning, I was a little hurt to know that it would just continue in that way,” Nieves now tells THR when opening up about her former scene partner. “And then as I sat with it, I was like, ‘Well, this is the way.’”
She continues, with a smile, “Cole… he was so excited. That was my brother, we talked every day. He was so excited about the opportunity that was at hand. And [with Jeremy] he was able to give the opportunity to someone else that was just as deserving.”
Jeremy Gauna as Pete Plenty Clouds in season two.
Ryan Green/Paramount+
Nieves explains how Gauna also knew Cole, and that they both set out to honor the late actor. “Because Jeremy also knew Coco, that created an already established safe and protective space, and he honored Coco as best as he could. I think he’s done a great job at doing so. It couldn’t have been anyone else,” she says.
Now, the 1923 star praises Sheridan for the storytelling choice to keep their romance in season two. “When looking back on it, I think it was a good decision because Pete Plenty Clouds has so much to tell and I know Coco would be sad if that wasn’t the case,” she adds.
When speaking back in 2023 about the part that Teonna’s storyline could play in Native storytelling at large, Nieves expressed hope that the stories they are telling on 1923 could reopen the world to more in-depth conversations within Indigenous families to talk about this dark time in U.S. history. “It is a lot to carry, and also I think it’s our duty to carry it,” she said at the time. “It’s our duty to tell these stories and to share these stories. Because I think to a mass amount of people, we still don’t exist. And people like to ignore the fact that we do exist. So I think I have a duty to share our stories, and to be a voice.”
Now, as season two continues to chart Teonna’s treacherous journey ahead, she expresses similar hopes for the huge audience watching. The season two premiere broke a Paramount+ viewership record to become its biggest original premiere with 5.4 million viewers.
“In Hollywood, you don’t really see people like us really get to express their love in a deep, deep way and really surrender to that,” she says. “So for her to be young and to have gone through what she’s gone through in season one and given the opportunity to now trust again, and to be so pure and innocent, awkward and just explore what that could feel like in a body that has been put through so much is everything. It was an experience, that’s for sure.”
The late Cole Brings Plenty, here as Pete Plenty Clouds in season one of ‘1923.’
Emerson Miller/Paramount+ © 2022 Viacom International Inc.
The season two premiere of 1923 is now streaming, with new episodes releasing Sundays on Paramount+.