As Teonna Rainwater, the Indigenous protagonist of “1923,” Aminah Nieves has really been through hell onscreen (spoilers ahead!). Though she was stolen from her family and placed in an abusive Catholic boarding school where even acknowledging Native culture could be deadly, Nieves’ character is headstrong, confident in her beliefs, and unafraid to stand up to the show’s sadistic nuns. After a dramatic Season 1 escape, Teonna conquers brutal terrain, a wolf attack, and other more human threats—all while racing through the Great Plains on horseback.
Watching Nieves ride onscreen, viewers would never know the actor had barely touched a horse since childhood. Growing up in Hammond, Indiana, a working-class city near Chicago, Nieves had been to the occasional kids’ birthday party with a pony, but she wasn’t exactly farm folk. That all changed when she joined the cast of the Paramount+ Western drama series “1923.” These days, she’s a regular rider, even competing in last year’s National Cutting Horse Association celebrity challenge.
“There’s nothing like riding a horse,” Nieves says. But going from a novice rider to a cutting competitor took months of work.
Shortly after she landed the role on “1923,” the show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, called the entire cast down to “Cowboy Camp,” where they spent about two weeks living, working, and riding together, training daily with noted Hollywood horse wranglers Diane Branagan and Bobby Lovgren. Nieves says the pace was quick—she went from learning to brush a horse on day one to riding one at full speed by day three—but it was rewarding.
“Learning how to ride a horse is humbling,” she explains. “We did it every day from 7 a.m. to probably 3 or 4 p.m., and we laughed, we fell, we cried, we were frustrated, and we kicked each other’s asses in the best way.”
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Nieves says she was given a number of different horses to ride during training and would recommend that approach to other actors learning the skill.
“You should be able to ride every single horse, because every horse is so different,” she explains. “You start to learn the canter of each horse and you start to learn the quirks of each one—like who’s fidgety and silly or who’s sweet or anxious.”
It can be a scary experience—Nieves says she was always aware horses are “huge beings that could literally kill you in a second”—but she learned to surrender to the process, saying it’s essential for novice riders to breathe and trust their team. There were safety measures in place for the “1923” cast, such as medical professionals, horse trainers, and experienced wranglers. Nieves says this gave her the support to be able to surrender, as well as the confidence that she was getting the best possible instruction and advice.
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“When you’re sitting on top of a horse, you can feel every single muscle and you can feel them breathe,” Nieves says. “But you have to find a mind-to-mind connection, as a lot of Indigenous people across the world know, because there’s so much to be said in that kind of stillness. It allows you to trust yourself and trust the horse, and cede control to one another.” She says it’s not unlike the acting process because “you have to let go of your ego in order to be free.”
Trust your scene partner.
While accidents can always happen, the horses that are used in the show are well-versed in being around not only humans but actors learning to ride.
“Those horses are genuinely more famous than anyone on that set,” she jokes. “They’ve been in so many movies and on TV that they literally can do anything, so long as you give them the simplest inkling that that’s what you want them to do.” Team them with stunt experts, like Danny Edmo from Wagon Burner Stunts, whom Nieves worked with on “1923,” and the result can be spectacular.
Nieves says there are other tips she could give actors looking to learn how to ride, like reminding yourself to keep your heels down in the stirrups if you want to really stay in the pocket and be able to direct the horse. More than anything, though, riding a horse is about having a clear mind and confidence that, even when days are hard, if you “just trust yourself and trust the voice in the back of your mind, you’ll get it in time.”
“Once it clicks, it clicks,” she says, “and then you’ll be unstoppable.”
