[This story contains one major spoiler from the first episode of The Madison.]
At the start of 2024, Michelle Pfeiffer acquired a name from her agent that Taylor Sheridan — the prolific hitmaker behind the Yellowstone-verse — needed to speak to her about a new sequence.
“I said, ‘Great, have him send the script,’” Pfeiffer remembers to The Hollywood Reporter. “They said, no, there’s no script. You have to go to Texas and meet him, and he would like to talk you through the story and your character.”
So Pfeiffer hopped on a airplane to Texas and located herself sitting with Sheridan at his Bosque Ranch outdoors Weatherford, Texas, discussing what would develop into the position of Stacy Clyburn in The Madison, the standalone Paramount+ sequence (not in the Yellowstone-verse) that Sheridan has described as his most intimate work but.
“He had a general outline, an overview of a story of this affluent family based in New York who really don’t want for anything. And tragedy strikes. It fractures the family. They end up in Montana trying to recover. And it’s tender and visceral and unexpectedly comical at times. Ultimately, they are pulled back together in ways that they never anticipated,” says Pfeiffer of their dialog.
She says she was advised little or no else in phrases of specifics, together with extra particulars about her character, Stacy. Then she left.
“He wanted to know who Stacy was before he started writing. I wanted to know who Stacy is before I committed. And so we went back and forth like that for a little while, and it became clear to me I wasn’t going to win this battle,” she says with a chuckle. “So I asked Helen Mirren to speak to me about her experience [with 1923].”
Mirren was one of Sheridan’s many A-list lures to tv for the Yellowstone prequel 1923, the place she performed Dutton matriarch Cara Dutton for two seasons. “I have to know something concrete about this guy, this project,” Pfeiffer says of what she requested Mirren. “And she just glowed; she couldn’t say enough nice things. She said the scripts were great, the productions were perfect. She was having the time of her life; she loved Montana. So I took a big leap of faith and I committed. I thought, ‘Well, the guy has a pretty darn good track record.’”
Pfeiffer, who will quickly be seen within the Apple TV sequence Margo’s Got Money Troubles, stated that when The Madison got here alongside she had been desirous to do one thing in tv. “I’d been watching all this amazing work being done, and getting really envious!” she says. So, she dedicated and got here on board.
Filming on The Madison didn’t start till September 2024, and Pfeiffer didn’t get a script till about 4 weeks earlier than they began capturing.
“That was new territory for me,” she admits. “This idea of starting and not getting the script until a month before we started shooting. I always prep for months in advance. You look at a script and chart it all out, what the journey of your character is. Here, you don’t know what the journey of your character is because you only get a couple scripts at a time. So I was nervous.”
Pfeiffer credit Yellowstone veteran Christina Voros, who directed all six episodes of The Madison season one, for serving to her by way of Sheridan’s course of. “She had to do a lot of hand-holding with me, and I learned to trust her immediately,” says Pfeiffer. “In our initial conversations, I think she thought, ‘What have I gotten into with this one?’ (Laughs.) It was a complete and utter joy being directed by her, and I know the entire cast felt that way.”
But that wasn’t the Oscar-nominee’s solely problem as soon as filming started. Sheridan needed Kurt Russell for the half of her onscreen husband, however when manufacturing started on The Madison, Russell was in manufacturing on his different sequence for Apple, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
From left: Kurt Russell as Preston Clyburn with Matthew Fox as Paul Clyburn.
Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+
The Madison tells the story of the New York City Clyburn household, led by Pfeiffer’s matriarch, Stacy. As the primary episode that launched on March 14 revealed, Stacy’s husband, Preston — performed by Russell — dies in a airplane crash whereas visiting his brother (performed by Matthew Fox) at their Montana ranch. Preston’s dying brings Stacy and her household (daughters performed by Beau Garrett and Elle Chapman; granddaughters performed by Alaina Pollack and Amiah Miller; and a son-in-law performed by Patrick J. Adams) to the mountains the place the Manhattanites are fish out of water within the place that Preston beloved with all of his soul, that they by no means visited. The first season follows the household discovering what drew Preston to Montana as they take care of their grief and fractured relationships.
“I shot my side of the work before he was cast,” says Pfeiffer of filming all of season one with out Russell. “I was not happy about that,” she says with a chuckle. “It was touch and go if they were going to make [Kurt’s] schedule work. But Taylor was insisting it was going to happen, so I just decided [in my head], ‘Ok, it’s Kurt.’ And because I know him, that was pretty easy to conjure up.”
Pfeiffer and Sheridan devised a plan to make Russell’s schedule work, they usually pitched their distinctive idea to Paramount. They would movie all of his scenes once they returned to movie the second season, which they filmed one 12 months later. That additionally meant that Fox, who performed brother Paul, would movie all of his season one scenes, which have been with Preston, once they returned to movie season two in September 2025. Voros additionally helmed all six episodes of season two.
“I had the monitor to look at for Michelle’s scenes,” Russell tells THR of how he filmed the Preston and Stacy scenes in season one after the actual fact. “I was working with somebody else. I would watch the scene that she played out and ask the script woman who was playing Stacy, ‘Give me that rhythm. We have to stay in that rhythm.’ So I sort of took it on my own, and it cuts together very well.”
Voros acknowledges that it might sound unusual to movie this manner — and lower collectively the wedding on the coronary heart of the present in post-production. “But once you see them together, it feels so inevitable, you can’t imagine it being anyone else,” she tells THR.
Russell says his group had been in contact about doing a Sheridan undertaking over time, however this one — which might reunite him together with his Tequila Sunrise co-star — spoke to him from the web page. “In order to understand both worlds, it would be nice to get somebody who understands both worlds, and that applies to me,” he shares. “I moved to Colorado when I was 26. But I stayed and remain in this business, and this business primarily functions out of L.A. and New York. I certainly prefer living in Colorado. Things like fly fishing and hunting.”
He continues, “I had four episodes to read [when I signed on] and the character was right there in front of me. I could see what it was and I thought it was terrific. I thought the writing was great. I thought Michelle was going to be great in it, so I had nothing to do but say, ‘If you can work the schedule out, let’s go.’”
Season two, the pair say, will see them filming collectively for the primary time however in a “different way.” The co-stars wouldn’t elaborate, in order to not give away any spoilers. “It’s in a different way. You might see more of us in season two, together,” says Pfeiffer. Russell provides, “Taylor is a good writer.”
The Madison releases the ultimate three episodes of season one Saturday on Paramount+; the primary three episodes are actually streaming. A launch date for season two has but to be revealed.
