For this pivotal scene in The Madison, director and cinematographer Christina Alexandra Voros was required to submerge Michelle Pfeiffer and Rebecca Spence in the frigid waters of a Montana creek in October: “I can still recall the feeling in the pit of my stomach, waking up that morning going, ‘I don’t know how I asked this of them,’ ” she recalls. Before anybody else was on set, Voros waded into the river “with my jeans rolled up, counting how many seconds it was going to take for my legs to get numb so I could understand what I was about to ask of these two actresses,” she says. For Pfeiffer, they were shooting two scenes’ worth of footage in one day. To minimize time spent in the water, each shot was carefully planned. The camera operators worked in an “almost military-style formation, moving from point A to point B, so we could make it as efficient as possible,” explains Voros.
Pfeiffer’s character, Stacy Clyburn, is mourning the death of her husband and his brother and in this scene is comforted by her best friend, Liliana (Spence). Capturing the emotionality of the moment was paramount, and an especially incredible feat, considering Pfeiffer and her scene partner had never met before shooting. “They just had this wonderful warmth and this deep sense of history in a friendship that was absolutely magical to watch,” says Voros. “Michelle’s character, the last thing she is thinking about is the temperature of the water.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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