The INSP series Elkhorn and actor Mason Beals were recently recognized during the 2025 C&I Movie & TV Awards.
Decades before he established himself on the world’s stage as a military leader, prominent politician and groundbreaking conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt rode tall as a cowboy near Medora, North Dakota. The formative years of his amazing life are the focus of Elkhorn, the excellent INSP period drama that received awards in the Best Series and Best Actor (TV) categories last week in the 2025 C&I Movie & TV Awards.
The series, which is set to return for Season 2 later this year on INSP, stars Mason Beals young Teddy; Jeff DuJardin as Marquis de Morès, a powerful and duplicitous French-born landowner who sees Roosevelt as a rival; Elijah Mahar as Bill Sewall, Teddy’s rugged, longtime friend and mentor; and Garrett Schulte as Wilmot Dowell, Sewall’s nephew, who journeys from New England to the Dakota Territory with his uncle to help the newbie rancher cowboy up.
“Most Americans are familiar with the man who charged up San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders and later became the country’s youngest president,” said Craig Miller, VP of Original Programming for INSP. “But few have heard of Roosevelt’s adventurous and life-altering years on the frontier after the unimaginable events that befell the future iconic leader as a 25-year-old.”
On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Roosevelt — then a rising star in the New York state legislature — was devastated by twin tragedies: His beloved wife Alice died giving birth to their first child; several hours later, and in the same household, his mother succumbed to typhus. In his diary on that day, he scribbled an “X,” then wrote: “The light has gone out of my life.”
But fate offered him a way to rekindle his spirits — and to start the transformation of man into myth.
“Reeling from these unimaginable losses,” Miller said, “Roosevelt decided to abandon his comfortable life as a New York State Assemblyman and member of the social elite class, and head west to America’s untamed frontier. Elkhorn gives viewers an unprecedented look into this dramatically transformative period in Roosevelt’s life.”
Right from the start of on-location filming for Season 1 of Elkhorn, Beals realized his biggest challenge would be to humanize the historical icon — to convey his weaknesses as well as his strengths — while at the same time demonstrating the strength of his character and, when necessary, the potency of his right hook.
Consider: During the opening sequence of the first episode, young TR has to dispatch a drunken bully with a few well-placed punches. (“I just thought it was a shame for the brute to mistake my silence for weakness,” Roosevelt later explains.) But the rough stuff leaves the asthmatic Roosevelt wheezing for breath, and nursing a sore hand.
“What I love about TR in this era — and about him in general — is that he was genetically programmed to be a big nerd,” Beals told C&I. “Think about it. He’s got asthma, he’s got terrible problems with his gut. He has horrible eyesight. But he’s incredibly intelligent, and he won’t let any of that stop him. He’s like, ‘Oh, absolutely not. I am no nerd.’ He thinks, ‘OK, you are not like the gruff cowboys that live out here, but you’re also not a pipsqueak.’
“But he is a pipsqueak in comparison to them, you know what I mean? He’s riding up on horses with this level of confidence that is almost not justified yet. Because he’s got this image of the heroes that he loves so much, he is playing pretend — but feeling it on the inside. So, it’s a really fun balance to figure out the parts where he is being a tough, cool, cowboy-type person, and where the city-slicker rich kid kind of comes in. It’s definitely a battle of those two mindsets for him, which is fun. As far as battles go, it’s a good battle.”
Young Teddy of course set out to win every battle, overcome every obstacle. Health would never be an an issue
“Yeah," Beals said, “he was told, from a very young age to not even run up a flight of steps. And then, it was not much later, he was climbing Mount Everest, you know what I mean?
“That sort of thing must've been so annoying to so many of the people in his life, for not listening to the medical advice that would have probably helped him. But also, he knew it wouldn’t stop him. There was just a level of confidence, of him constantly saying that, 'Oh, this isn’t going to stop me,’ which is, you can only imagine being friends with him, or being someone who really loved and cared about him, and going, ‘Please, Teddy, just sit and chill for a second.’
“Yeah, there were so many things that he had to overcome. And then he’s out in a territory like this, that was just not good for him whatsoever. But again, he just made himself stronger and stronger and stronger, until he was almost unstoppable.
