THE HEARTBREAKING TRUTH: MICHELLE PFEIFFER & KURT RUSSELL REVEAL THE MADISON TRAGEDY 💔🌧️

“Hey, cowboy.”

Michelle Pfeiffer welcomes Kurt Russell with the apt greeting as he walks onto the Big Sky set of Entertainment Weekly‘s Los Angeles cover shoot for their new Taylor Sheridan series, The Madison.

Over the course of the interview, the Hollywood icons will leap out of their seats, perform physical gags that send the other into echoing peals of joyous laughter, and quietly reach out to hold hands, but in this moment there’s a profound silence that stretches across the bar as Russell expounds on what keeps him (and everyone) humble: death.

He pitches forward, taps Pfeiffer’s armrest, and reveals he already has a title for his seemingly posthumous memoir. “Kurt Russell’s Dead: How on Earth Are We Gonna Go On?” he jokes. “Then your realization hits you: It makes you angry about this person you knew, who you felt meant so much, and the world’s treating it as if they don’t. I can’t believe it. They didn’t even know about it.”

Most people actively avoid confronting their own mortality — even more so at eight in the morning like Russell is now. However, it’s that salient outrage and heartbreak that he believes is perfectly weaved into The Madison. The drama (which just premiered its first three episodes on Paramount+), follows the affluent Clyburn family, led by mom Stacy (Pfeiffer), as they venture out West from New York City to rural Montana to identify the bodies of patriarch Preston (Russell) and uncle Paul (Matthew Fox) following their deaths in a small plane crash.

Pfeiffer views loss as a priority reset.

“For a brief amount of time, all that really matters is connection with other human beings,” she tells her costar. “I remember feeling it a couple of times in my life when I suffered losing someone who was meaningful to me. I remember thinking, Oh my God, how can I hold on to this? It felt so good and so real and authentic and safe…. And in a weird way, it was relaxing, because I wasn’t busy just trying to make things happen. You just stop all that.”

The Golden Globe-winning actress laughs as she admits to EW, “Stacy’s not there yet.”

That’s putting it lightly. The first three episodes of The Madison have pushed the matriarch to the brink as she grapples with the loss of her husband and what to do with the bucolic Montana property that he and his brother left behind. Her current plan is to bury Preston and Paul in Stacy’s Valley, a wildflower-dotted hillside named after her that overlooks the winding riverbed where the brothers spent years fly fishing together.

But the idea of Stacy planting permanent roots in Montana raises red flags for her adult daughters Paige (Elle Chapman) and Abigail (Beau Garrett), given their desire to quickly return back to NYC — a land with indoor plumbing and no need for bear spray.

“Their plan is to leave,” Garrett says of the sisters. “The only thing that is telling them they’re staying is their mother. I think they’re just waiting for her to be like, ‘Okay, let’s get the plane!’ And it’s just not happening.”

At least, not yet.

A new frontier

When The Madison was announced in August 2024, Paramount billed it as one of several Yellowstone spinoffs, alongside Dutton Ranch, 6666, and 1944. Pfeiffer remembers Sheridan described the series as “the next chapter of Yellowstone” before it “became its own show, separate” from the franchise. (Jane Wiseman, executive vice president and head of originals at Paramount+, tells EW that she’s “always known” that The Madison wasn’t a Yellowstone spinoff, but acknowledges that she “wasn’t in the original story meeting where Taylor said one way or the other” and that it may have been “communicated differently” in the past.)

Pfeiffer ultimately signed onto the project as a star and executive producer without seeing a script, noting that Sheridan gave her a “skeletal” overview of its premise — which didn’t change, regardless of spinoff status — and “wanted to cast it first and then write around [us]” instead.

Russell followed in the same capacity soon after, crediting Sheridan’s female-gaze-oriented writing, as well as his interest in reuniting with Pfeiffer almost 40 years after they shared the screen in 1988’s Tequila Sunrise. When a prior commitment threatened Russell’s involvement, Pfeiffer and Sheridan suggested the series be split into two separate, six-episode seasons to keep him aboard.

From there, the Clyburn clan was forged in myriad ways. Chapman, making her television debut in the series, recalls screen testing in Wyoming “against girls I grew up watching” before Sheridan called and confirmed she’d landed the role.

Garrett, star of Tron: Legacy and Firefly Lane, remembers reading the third episode’s delightfully awkward round-pen scene with Sheridan as part of her audition. The cast eventually came together with Fox as Paul; Patrick J. Adams as Paige’s pushover husband, Russell; and Amiah Miller and Alaina Pollack as Abigail’s daughters Bridgett and Macy, respectively.

To spearhead the series, Sheridan tapped Christina Alexandra Voros — a longtime collaborator whose credits include Yellowstone, 1883, and Lawman: Bass Reeves — to pull double duty as The Madison‘s director and director of photography. She tells EW that Sheridan’s cultural touchstones for the series were films that explored familial grief and trauma, including the fly-fishing-heavy A River Runs Through It (which Stacy and her family sob through in the very first episode, as well as Legends of the Fall and the Oscar-winning Ordinary People. 

“A tragedy affects families in such fascinating ways, and it brings the most raw emotions — good, bad, and ugly — to the surface,” Voros explains. “And what’s so interesting about the way that The Madison is written is you are allowed to peek through the lens of many different experiences of grief, and to see it felt from the perspective of someone who’s been in a marriage for 40 years, and a granddaughter who has only had nine years with this person. You not only see how people deal with loss individually, but how it affects each other and the family dynamic.”

Better together

When it came to crafting The Madison, Voros says that it was “important, first and foremost, to really build and create the love that is the most grieved.”

In other words, the romance between Stacy and Preston. It’s clear that the couple, who began dating when Stacy was 19, balanced each other out, with flashback sequences highlighting their playful, “opposites attract” dynamic even when they’re debating how to handle the latest family drama.

Now, with Preston gone, Stacy is struggling to imagine a world without her first and only love.

“When you have grown up with someone and you’re so entangled with each other, after a while, you don’t really even know where you end and the other person begins,” Pfeiffer says. “How do you even start to imagine your life without them and rebuild when everything you knew has fallen apart?”

The actress explains that Stacy hasn’t even begun processing Preston’s death by the end of the third episode.

“It’s also the shock of it. It also becomes like a PTSD thing,” she continues. “It’s bad enough if somebody gets ill and you see them suffer, but it’s not such a shock to your system when [they pass]. It’s so compounded.”

At the same time, Stacy’s also battling a keen sense of regret over never visiting Montana when Preston was alive, which inspires her to commit to learning everything that she can about the land from his old notebook.

Russell points out that Stacy’s newfound outdoors obsession is rooted in “extreme guilt,” adding, “When she says, ‘I want to know everything about this place that I denied him the pleasure of us sharing together’… That’s a deep guilt. That’s a really deep guilt.”

Family matters

The rest of the Clyburns aren’t handling Preston’s death much better. The first three episodes have seen their dinner table become a proverbial battleground over elk entrees and, later, a literal one when Abigail and Paige get into a brutal, bloody brawl during breakfast.

“That scene in particular just felt very crazy at some moments,” Chapman says of the fight sequence. “Especially when I had to run at [Abigail], and I’m yelling and pushing her into the bookcase.”

Their hair-pulling, biting, and shoving is quickly ended by Stacy, who gives her daughters one serious scolding.

“That scene hit hard,” Garrett recalls. “It shocked me how insanely ashamed I felt at that moment.”

Pfeiffer sees the carnage between the siblings for what it really is.

“It’s all displaced anger,” she says. “They’re so heartbroken and angry about their father and they don’t know where to put it. They don’t want to put it with me, because they see how fragile I am, and they trust each other. You always lay in on somebody that you can trust, and who are you going to trust more than your sister?”

Chapman adds that Paige is still actively in denial when it comes to Preston’s death, but that her pain surfaces in unexpected ways.

“Outwardly to her family, the way [Paige] handles grief is kind of… I don’t want to say bratty, but she creates a defense mechanism where she cares more about these other little things — like the environment — because it’s easier for her to deal with something that’s tangible versus this intangible thing that she’s lost a huge part of her life and heart,” she says. “It takes time for her to process and realize it.”

Especially since Paige is the baby of the family and “has always been a daddy’s girl,” according to Chapman. “The reason she married Russell is because he represents a lot of what her father was able to provide for her: stability, caretaking, support,” she adds. “I think Russell emulates all of those things. And also he’s successful, and her dad was really successful. She’s always been really, really close to her father.”

Which is why, she warns, a breakdown is on the horizon.

“It doesn’t hit her that he’s actually gone until episode 4,” Chapman teases. “But there’s a moment where she really realizes it.”

Elder daughter Abigail is on a similar trajectory, despite the single mom’s best attempts to hold her own mother and children upright as they acclimate to Montana and plan Preston and Paul’s funeral.

“She sees how unraveled her mother is, and she has a natural ability to be steadfast and patient, because obviously she can’t control anything,” Garrett says. “Her mom isn’t going to do what she asked her to do, and Paige is not going to relate to her the way she wants her to relate to her, and her kids are not gonna want to be here, and someone has to be calm throughout it all. I don’t know that she made that choice willingly, or if it just kind of happened naturally, but it seems like that’s Abigail’s through-line in this until she can’t anymore. Until she breaks.”

And that moment is coming.

“You haven’t seen the full meltdown quite yet,” she says. “There’s a point where you can only take so much. Stacy is pushing everyone to wake up, and everyone has a breaking point.”

Head over heals

And then there’s Abigail’s whirlwind romance with that sheriff. Episode 3 introduced viewers to Van Davis (Ben Schnetzer), the unassuming police officer who picks up Abigail in his squad car after Stacy ditches her daughter by the side of the road during a tense argument. Against all odds, the pair end up hitting it off, with Abigail sending Van on his way later that evening with a few kisses and her phone number.

So… he’s going to call her, right?

“The chances are high,” Schnetzer teases. “But it’ll surprise you.”

Their connection is one that comes “completely out of left field” for Abigail, says Garrett. Still, she cautions that her character isn’t taking anything too seriously right now, adding, “I think she’s just like, ‘This is amazing. He’s a very handsome man. And I am feeling so lost. Maybe he can just help me not feel lost for a bit.’”

It helps that Van has also dealt with grief, having lost his wife in an ATV accident years ago.

“That’s one of the things that’s so intriguing about this relationship: how unexpected that enmeshment is, and how these two people from completely different worlds recognize a brief glimpse of a counterpoint in each other,” Schnetzer shares. “Both of whom have dealt with tragedy in their own lives, and in their own right, and are navigating it in their own way. It’s the great equalizer, grief. And so there’s common ground that they stand on in having experienced that.”

Their fledgling bond is one of a growing list of reasons for Abigail to permanently move to Montana, but Garrett says that the Clyburns aren’t ready to say goodbye to the Big Apple just yet.

“I think that, ultimately, they can’t just close out their chapter of New York and never come back,” she remarks. “There’s a lot that has to be done. So it’s gonna be a ride over the next three episodes.”

Wild mountain time

As if dealing with the loss of a family member wasn’t hard enough, it hasn’t been an easy transition for the Clyburns to go from the hustle and bustle of New York City to the great outdoors. Not that their local community — including Van and well-meaning neighbor Cade Harris (Kevin Zegers) — haven’t tried to help out the East Coast elites wherever they can.

“We are definitely out of our element here in Montana,” Chapman confesses. “We come from this concrete jungle. None of these characters have ever encountered natural wildlife and the ruggedness that Montana offers, and I think that we’re all still trying to figure out: How do we exist in this world? And Paige struggles a little bit more than others because she also loves designer clothes and is wearing high heels all the time.”

It certainly doesn’t help being stung repeatedly in the groin by angry outhouse hornets. The comedic scene from episode 2, which saw Chapman “scream and grab my ass and run,” was the first she ever filmed for The Madison.

“It was actually a pretty great scene to start with, because it’s so high energy and you really have to commit,” she reflects. “What I really learned with Paige is, if you don’t commit, it doesn’t work. It can seem like a caricature.”

But that much-needed levity is intentional.

“The City Mouse and Country Mouse part of it is a very deep pool of humor in the season, and it always seems to be implicating the folks least equipped to deal with it,” Voros notes. “I feel like if Abby had gotten stung by the hornets, it would have been not quite as much of a chaotic spree. And that’s something beautiful that Taylor does in his writing. I think he said something once that, as he writes, he tries to create characters that people will love and then do crazy things to them. And watching them try to deal with something that they don’t have the tools to deal with is at times heartbreaking, and at times hysterical.”

Moving forward

The Clyburn family’s future, both personally and geographically, remains uncertain ahead of the season’s final three episodes, which will all drop on March 21. Wiseman reveals that the characters “do spend time back in New York,’ so it appears that they will soon be homeward bound after all.

The second half of the season also promises to introduce some new characters into the fold, including Abigail’s notorious ex-husband.

“He will come at the end of the season,” Garrett confirms. “I think you’ll understand a lot when you meet him.”

Russell also emphasizes that the family’s loss is still fresh by the end of season 1, noting that it’s been “less than a week” since the accident. “Stacy’s] still gonna run into people saying, ‘Hey, how’s Preston doing?’ ‘He’s a great guy.’ ‘Remember the time we did that thing?”” Russell points out. “There won’t even be time for her to say he’s dead!”

While we wait for a release date for The Madison’s already filmed second season, Wiseman is thinking further ahead, hoping the series will “continue on” for a third season too: “I mean, this is, again, a love story — and an evolution — and so I do feel like there’s a lot more to tell.”

Which sounds good to Garrett, because there’s one storyline in particular she would like to see come to fruition.

“You know, I still kept waiting for the grizzly bear,” she muses. “I feel like there’s been so many references to bear spray. I’m still waiting. We’ll see what happens.”

Seeing a bear would require Garrett’s character to stay in Montana, a move that Stacy has advocated for in the past and even threatened to cut her elder daughter off financially if she stays in NYC. The ultimatum is something her parents are divided on — or, at least, the actors who play her parents.

Back at the Manhattan speakeasy, Russell, who has leaned forward like he’s developing a game plan, and Pfeiffer have differing opinions on Stacy’s parenting strategy that play out like a scrapped scene — to the point where a laughing Pfeiffer remarks, “Oh no, don’t go Preston on me now!”

She, not unlike Stacy, believes Abigail moving to Montana is the “last chance she has to make her life mean something.” Russell, very much Preston, is worried about the repercussions of throwing their daughter into the deep end.

“I want to see how this goes, because if Stacy really does do this, that girl’s suspect to really falling down,” he explains, before referencing his and Pfeiffer’s characters. “These two people have had a lot of conversations about that. She’s always been stronger than him in that regard, but it’s part of the reason you like him.”

That yin and yang is as central to the couple on screen as it is to the actors portraying them.

As Pfeiffer simply states, “We balance each other out.”