[The story contains major spoilers from the season one finale of The Madison.]
The Madison has brought a new family to the Sheridan-verse. And after the conclusion of its first season, the story of the Clyburns is only just getting started.
The grief drama from Yellowstone hit-maker Taylor Sheridan introduced viewers to the Clyburns when it plucked them out of their New York City comforts and plopped them on an uncomfortable yet transformative six-episode tour through their grief in Montana.
The first season was given an unusual release, as it streamed in two parts over the last two weekends on Paramount+, like two mini-movies — which is how the story could be viewed. The second season has already been filmed and is in the can, awaiting an official release date from the streamer, and the cast, in conversations with The Hollywood Reporter here, makes it clear that Sheridan plans to continue.
“They’re hoping for season three,” star Michelle Pfeiffer tells THR.
No official announcements have been made, but Sheridan usually gets what he wants.
The Madison was a leap of faith for Pfeiffer when she signed on to play Clyburn matriarch Stacy. She didn’t have a script or much of a character description after leaving an early 2024 meeting with Sheridan at his Texas ranch when he pitched her the series in person — nor did she have a scene partner. Kurt Russell, who would eventually sign on to play her husband, Preston, was in production on his Apple series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and wasn’t available when season one was set to begin in the fall. So Pfeiffer and Sheridan pitched to Paramount that they move forward with a second season, and that Russell film all of his season one scenes when they return one year later, in 2025, to make season two.
That meant Pfeiffer would film the entirety of season one without Russell, their scenes cut together in the edit. “I was not happy about that,” Pfeiffer recently told THR with a laugh. “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, ‘OK, it’s Kurt.’ And because I know him, that was pretty easy to conjure up.”
The series proves to be a Pfeiffer vehicle as she steers her fractured, privileged and often out-of-touch family through their stages of grief after Preston’s sudden death. After Preston and his brother Paul, played by Matthew Fox, tragically die in a plane crash while at their Montana home to open the series, Preston’s children (played by Beau Garrett and Elle Chapman; with a son-in-law played by Patrick J. Adams) and grandchildren (played by 11-year-old Alaina Pollack and Amiah Miller) travel with Stacy to the cabin in the mountains that Preston loved his entire life, but a place that the rest of his family had never visited.
“That’s often how people die in airplanes, when an emotional factor makes their decision-making,” Fox, a pilot himself, tells THR. “He only gets his brother out there for a couple weeks a year. He’s flown him to this special place. It bothered me that Paul was a little nonchalant about the weather that was moving in, but I justified i that he’s just trying to give his brother the very best birthday gift he possibly could.”
After many hurdles for this fish-out-of-water family and self-proclaimed “city mouse” Stacy — ranging from outhouse attacks by hornets, elk dinners that nearly undo the family and many, many lessons in empathy and readjusting preconceptions — Stacey ends the first season deciding to live at the Montana home that has now been imprinted onto her soul. After burying her husband there and holding a memorial in New York City, she leaves the city without any word to her family and arrives at Preston’s final resting place in Montana. When she is found by cowboy Cade (Kevin Zegers), she tells her friendly neighbor that she could use a hand getting settled, as she plans to stay for a while.
The ending sets up The Madison to return the series to the mountains as the main setting for season two, and the cast told THR they all plan to follow — in some way, shape or form.
“The family unit of the Clyburns is what holds everyone together, and they’re all integral to that dynamic. So there are a lot of questions at the end of season one that will be answered when you get to season two,” Yellowstone veteran Christina Voros, who directed the entire series, tells THR. “When the script showed up in my inbox, I cried. It’s such a unique show for Taylor in a lot of ways, but it’s a very specific show for me as an East Coaster who met a cowboy [husband Jason Owen, also animal coordinator on the series] and fell in love and moved to Texas and discovered Montana through shooting Westerns for Taylor. There was so much in the DNA of the show that felt specifically like it was speaking to me. I’ve never had the opportunity to direct something that I felt so creatively attached to.”
What especially spoke to Voros was the storyline with Abby, Stacy’s older, divorced daughter — and mother to Bridgette (Miller) and younger sister Macy (Pollack) — who is played by Garrett. “It’s funny watching her conversations with Van,” Voros says of the sheriff played by Ben Schnetzer. “Some of those are conversations I had with Jason when I first met him.”
After finding a deep (and steamy) connection while in Montana, Abby heads back to New York City after a difficult conversation with Van that highlighted their seemingly impossible romance. But the door is left ajar after a finale phone call heading into season two. “Christina was able to bring a very deft touch and particular insight, which was hugely helpful,” says Schnetzer, who returns for season two. “It’s a love story between two people who have quite complicated and committed lives, but that only adds to the drama and the intrigue. At times it really takes fire, and at times they’re kind of pulled apart.
“I find Christina to be so enthralling, and her story to be so enthralling,” says Garrett of The Madison helmer and what’s in store for Abby and Van. “There’s a softness to Abby that happens in season two that didn’t have a place in season one that was really fun to explore, a happiness; a joy. A bit of life that maybe she had forgotten in herself.”
She adds, “I don’t think this family is going to let the matriarch be alone in Montana.”
Pfeiffer and Russell were officially on board when Voros was approached in 2024 by Sheridan to direct his next series. They were filming what would become the final episodes of Yellowstone, and Sheridan told his go-to director that he would have scripts for her soon. But the supporting cast wasn’t yet set when the scripts showed up in her inbox.
When the rest of the Clyburn family booked their auditions — which, for most of them, included screen tests in Wyoming — they questioned if the show was set in the Yellowstone-verse, since that’s how it was first announced. There was a group chat named “Clyburn & Co” (separate from a text chain that included their Oscar- and Emmy-nominated onscreen parents) that would churn with every script delivery. “We would text, ‘Episode five just dropped, guys!’ Everybody would race to read it, and then we’d all discuss,” shares Chapman.
Adams said it was then made clear that The Madison would no longer be existing in or connected to the world of the Duttons, and that this series would be “its own thing.”
He also had a personal connection to the story. “We lost my stepdad about three years ago now and part of that was that we inherited this cabin. So I was in a cabin with my family, much like the Clyburns, when this show came to me,” Adams shares with THR. “I was having a very similar experience of wondering how we take care of it when I got the audition. Then I got a message that Taylor was really into [my tape] and he wanted me in Wyoming. But I couldn’t go. I would have to strand my family to get down there. I thought that would be it, and then they came back and said I could just make another tape.”
Chapman recalls at the screen test in Wyoming hearing other actors auditioning for Russell saying, “’Thank God Patrick J. Adams isn’t here, because I heard he was testing.’ They thought he was out of the running,” she says with a smile.
Adams would go on to land the role of Russell, who serves as comedic relief and an unexpected ally to Stacy as she tries to enlighten her daughters about Montana. And Chapman booked the role of his wife, Stacy’s younger and most self-centered daughter Paige. “It was very surreal,” admits the 27-year-old of her first screen test, for Sheridan, no less. “I tested against nine other girls, most of which I had grown up watching. I was so nervous.”
Paige and Russell seem the least likely to book a return flight to Montana for season two, but the actors say more evolution is in store for all of the Clyburns, including their married characters.
“Both places exist at the same time [between Montana and New York],” says Adams of next season. “The bulk of the story is Montana-based. They find themselves there and, I’m not sure how much they want us talking about the specifics, but this show exists with these people in this space trying to figure out who they are, not only to themselves but to each other, and it’s sort of a deepening position.”
Miller, who plays oldest granddaughter Bridgette, sums up: “Season one is about the family reconnecting and learning how to survive both emotionally and physically. Season two is about them rebuilding after they’ve reconnected and finding their footing and their love for each other.”
One person not returning for season two, however, is Fox. The Lost star also filmed the entirety of his scenes during season two production, since Russell was his scene partner, and the idea of a limited engagement was a draw for the actor.
“That’s one of my requirements these days,” he tells THR with a laugh, sharing that he still gets approached by people on airplanes who tell him he makes them nervous (because of Lost). “I’m at a point in my life where I’d rather pop in and do something interesting, but I don’t want to dedicate six years of my life to something [again]. Taylor is an an exceptional writer. When I read the scripts, it really hit me where it hurts, and also made me laugh.”
Fox, who grew up in Wyoming, says he “appreciated Taylor’s authenticity of the world. He offers a lot as a storyteller, not just on a dialogue level but there’s so much subtext. I don’t know how he does everything that he’s doing. It’s mind-boggling. I’ve worked on other series where there’s a creator and a writers room where a lot of people are involved, and he writes everything. It’s really kind of astounding.”
When making a rare public appearance to introduce The Madison at its recent New York City premiere, Sheridan acknowledged the labor of love that went into what he has described as his most intimate and personal series yet. “This is a very emotionally taxing project because it’s about grief and family and tearing apart and coming back together, so it demanded a lot and it demanded a lot of everyone,” he said. He then credited Voros for carrying out his vision. “I had to turn it over to one person to trust to execute my vision and take this on. I’m a big believer that when you find a talent that understands your voice, you need to surrender to that talent,” he said. “[Voros] exceeded even my wildest expectations.”
The first episode ended with a dedication to the late Robert Redford, which Voros says was Sheridan’s idea, and Redford’s A River Runs Through It was an inspiration — it’s even part of the plot when Stacy shows the movie to her daughters after Preston’s death. The series was filmed on location in Montana, with the cabin interiors filmed on a stage in Texas. The New York City scenes were filmed both on location and in Dallas’ Fort Worth area.
“This was a beautiful series to make,” says Voros. “It all starts with the writing. There’s a reason for those of us who are lucky enough to work on Taylor’s shows — the reason people gravitate to these stories is because of the characters and the language they are able to speak. He’s a rare voice in this industry.”
Garrett thinks five seasons would be a nice number to follow the Clybun story through, though she admits “I don’t know where it goes, where it could go” beyond season two. But “grief is universal. Everyone has someone or something they’ve lost. That is relatable for anybody. Also, we all want to laugh, and this is also a really funny show. Grief is messy and funny,” she says.
“I think I speak for everyone when I say we would gladly shoot this show forever,” adds Adams. “I think we’ve found something kind of miraculously special here, so as long as it’s a story people want to hear, we’d be happy to tell it.”
Voros agrees, “Any time you get a show together with a cast like this you kind of want it to go forever. Having completed the second season, you just fall more and more in love with them as a family. It’s more complicated, emotionally, underneath.”
Season two will also bring about Pfeiffer and Russell’s first scenes actually filmed together, as Stacy and Preston’s love story will continue even after his death.
“You might see more of us in season two, together,” Pfeiffer briefly teases. Russell echoes only, “It’s in a different way.”
The pair are well trained on spoilers as they settle into their roles within the Sheridan-verse.
“I’ve spent a lot of time on the East Coast and I’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains. They all have something different to offer,” says Pfeiffer of relating to Stacy. “I love Montana. But I don’t know that I would live there. I am a city mouse.”
The Madison is now streaming all of season one on Paramount+. Read THR’s show coverage.
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