“The Madison” is a Taylor Sheridan show like no other.
The creator of “Landman,” “Tulsa King” and “Lioness,” along with the extended “Yellowstone” universe that now includes “Dutton Ranch” and “Marshals,” set out to do something different with his latest drama, which stars Michelle Pfeiffer as a woman mourning the unexpected loss of her husband (Kurt Russell). She’s used to the high-class Manhattan lifestyle, but she travels to Montana to retrieve her husband’s body and winds up falling in love with the land that he found so enriching.
It’s a story of resilience and survival, where the contours of the land reflect the emotional hills and valleys of the characters. Instead of the non-stop thrills of Sheridan’s other work, “The Madison” takes a more contemplative, spiritual take.
And while Sheridan wrote every episode of the first season of “The Madison,” it fell to one of Sheridan’s most trusted lieutenants, Christina Alexandra Voros, to bring it to life. Voros has directed episodes of “Yellowstone,” its prequel series “1883” and Sheridan’s “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” (she also directed episodes of the inaugural season of “Dutton Ranch”). For “The Madison” she not only directed every episode – she also served as her own cinematographer. Talk about a feat.
Voros is the subject of our latest installment of How I Did It, presented by Paramount+. You can watch it above.
“We did a screening for our cast and crew before it was released and it was all this sniffling in the audience, and when the lights went on it was all the big burly grip dudes and the electricians and the transportation guys who were like, ‘I just need to call my mom,’” Voros told TheWrap. “It hit me in that moment that we touched on something very real and that’s what people are connecting to. It’s a very human, very tender, very emotionally raw story about grief. And it’s universal.”
When Voros first received the scripts from Sheridan, she said that she “almost fell out of her chair.” Just like Pfeiffer’s character, she’s a self-described “East coast girl” that met a cowboy from West Texas and moved to a small town in the middle of the desert. This is not unlike the journey of the characters in “The Madison.”
“Never thought I’d leave New York, never thought I’d love the west. But reading this script about a family that is forced to discover a place because of something that happens in their life that they never anticipated and discovering something about themselves that they never anticipated – it felt so of my DNA as a human being and as a storyteller, I couldn’t believe what I was given the opportunity to read, much less be involved in telling that story,” Voros marveled.
In terms of how the landscape informed “The Madison,” Voros said that Sheridan has “an incredible knack for writing place as character in a way that really lets you bask in the natural beautiful of a geographical location but also comes with a great amount of responsibility of doing that space justice because the geography carries such an emotional and narrative weight in the story.”
Thankfully, Voros was up to the challenge – as a director, as a cinematographer and as one of Sheridan’s most trusted collaborators and storytellers. Without her, “The Madison” would just be a valley in Montana. Or an avenue in Manhattan. With her, it’s so much more.
“The Madison” season 1 is streaming on Paramount+ right now.
The post ‘The Madison’ Director/DP Christina Alexandra Voros on Shepherding a Tender Exploration of Grief | How She Did It appeared first on TheWrap.
