Faith Hill and Tim McGraw React To Devastating 1883 Finale

Warning: The below features spoilers for the season one finale of 1883.

It turns out Faith Hill and Tim McGraw are just like fans of their hit show 1883—because they couldn’t make it through the finale without crying, either!

The Feb. 27th finale of the Paramount+ series saw the death of daughter Elsa Dutton, played by Isabel May, after being shot by an arrow in Feb. 20th’s episode. Isabel died in the arms of her father (McGraw) arms after an emotional goodbye to her mother (Hill). 

The country legends opened up about their process for preparing for episodes, and revealed why that all went out the window for the finale. “When we got the final two, we literally couldn’t read them to each other because we were crying so much—I mean, ugly, boohoo crying,” McGraw told Variety. “I was a blubbering idiot.”

The actors, and real-life couple, had a practice of taking turns reading the scripts out loud to each other all season. But the emotional heights of the material eventually made that impossible. “He [McGraw] couldn’t read it because he was bawling,” Hill revealed. “It took me about an hour to read it to him because most of the time, I couldn’t catch my breath I was crying so hard.”