Taylor Sheridan‘s new series The Madison started off with numerous main characters dying in the series premiere.
During the three-episode drop on Saturday, March 14, Preston (Kurt Russell) visited brother Paul (Matthew Fox) in Montana for his birthday where they planned to go fishing at a special spot only accessible by small private plane. Paul flew them there despite noticing bad weather, and the siblings stayed there until a storm started.
Paul tried to fly them back but too much fog caused them to crash in the woods. The rest of the premiere showed Preston’s wife, Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer), having to identify her family’s bodies before flying to Montana herself to see where her husband spent his final days.
Executive producer and director Christina Alexandra Voros addressed the decision to show Preston’s death on screen — and the aftermath.
“The experience of grief is something that’s universal. The way it becomes personal is in the specificity with which it is examined,” Voros exclusively told Us Weekly. “Part of the reason the show is so resonant to me is because I think anyone who watches it can see themselves in these characters — or see loved ones resonating in these characters. We feel more for a character and characters make us feel more for ourselves when those experiences are very specific.”
It was always the plan to show every aspect of losing a loved one.
“Living with a character in a moment — waiting for luggage at an airport or standing in a coroner’s office — are the quiet moments where you do not have the distraction of anything else other than the enormity of what you are dealing with,” she continued. “The emotional space is a very resonant place for storytelling to live.”
According to the official synopsis, The Madison follows the Clyburn family from New York City, who “relocate to the Madison River valley of southwest Montana for emotional recovery following a tragedy that shattered the family.”
In addition to Russell, 74, and Pfeiffer, 67, the show stars Patrick J. Adams, Elle Chapman, Matthew Fox, Beau Garrett, Alaina Pollack, Amiah Miller as members of the Clyburn family, Ben Schnetzer, Kevin Zegers. Rebecca Spence and Danielle Vasinova make up the rest of the cast.
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“Taylor has a wonderful knack of putting what he wants to be known from the script into the script. There is always a specificity to what locations are — to what moment of the scene is the most resonant to character descriptions,” Voros told Us about collaborating with Sheridan, 55. “There’s so much DNA in the scripts themselves that there are fewer conversations than you would think [between us]. We’ve been working together for a very long time. I feel lucky enough to have been trusted with interpreting his writing for screen for a very long time.”
Voros also weighed in on Russell calling The Madison “a very female-gaze-oriented show,” adding, “I agree with Kurt. It is through a feminine gaze. But Taylor has always written strong women. He has always imbued his female characters with ferociousness and complexity that is really exciting to play with as an actress and also as a director.”
She continued: “In some ways, The Madison feels like a more feminine gaze — perhaps because you have all of these female protagonists — but I think he has had that element in his writing all along.”
Voros teased what viewers can expect from the second half of the season, which premieres Saturday, March 21, telling Us, “The audience has a lot to dig into in season 1 — and I think there will be a lot of questions left to answer at the end of those six episodes.”
The Madison is currently streaming on Paramount+.
