Aminah Nieves on Season 2 of ‘1923’ & What’s Ahead of Teonna Rainwater

“It was a blur,” says Aminah Nieves in the days following the Season Two premiere of her hit show “1923.” The actress is already back home near Gary, Ind., where she grew up, and still processing the big night. For the night, she worked with stylist Amanda Lim on a look that included a black dress by Monot, shoes by Manc and jewelry by Ohiri, and hair by Sabrina Porsche and makeup by Pircilla Pae. 

Lim put together a spread of looks for Nieves to try on, and the decision came together with the help of “1923” hairstylist Tim Muir, a fellow Gary native with whom Nieves is close. 

“We were going through things and I honestly wasn’t going to try on the dress. I was not. And [Muir] was like, ‘no, you need to try that on,’” Nieves recalls. “And when we tried it on, it was like, ‘oh my god, this is it. This is the dress.’”

The premiere showed the second season’s first episode, which Nieves took in alongside her family and team. It was only the second time she’d seen the footage.

“Hearing everyone laugh at Teonna’s little snarky teenager responses…was like, ‘oh, thank god.’ Because you never know how people are going to perceive your art, and you never know if things are going to actually get through,” Nieves says. “So to hear the reactions, and then to be told afterwards about the work that you’ve done was a breath of fresh air.”

Nieves returns as Teonna Rainwater in the “Yellowstone” prequel show alongside Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Season Two kicked off on Feb. 23.

“Season One, Teonna was always moving through this very heightened state, and in Season Two, I think for all of the characters, they’re all kind of at that state that T was at in Season One. So every single character is very heightened, but also T has a little moment to just be a kid again, to not have this wall built up,” Nieves previews. “She has the opportunity to remember what it is to be a daughter and how to do that, and how to be a kid. She’s experiencing this very sweet, tender, awkward, messy love for the first time in her life. So, yeah, she is a whirlwind.”

Teonna is a young Indigenous woman who was stolen from her family on the Broken Rock Reservation and sent to an abusive Catholic boarding school.

“I mean, I just love T because she is a real person that exists within Indian country and that exists within almost all Indigenous people’s lives and culture. And she is a reminder of the history that we are continuously moving through,” Nieves says of her character. “She’s a reminder of the resilience of our people and being able to explore that and share her with the world, especially now, because a lot of people don’t know the history, don’t know that this is actually true and that it existed and that it was literally going on until the ’90s. So to be able to share this with the world and to offer it up to people in a way that isn’t aggressive, that allows people to be curious on their own is everything.”

Ahead, Nieves will be seen in Kathryn Bigelow’s untitled Netflix project, which she has already wrapped. 

“Oh, girly. Let me tell you, this NDA is locked,” she says when asked about the project. “Just know that this is so different from anything that I’ve ever done before. It’s a challenge.”