Actors, including Golden Globe Award-winning actress Michelle Pfeiffer, are often forced to undergo grueling filming sessions on set.
During an appearance on the LA Times’ podcast In Conversation: The Madison, the 67-year-old actress, who stars as Stacey Clyburn in Taylor Sheridan’s new Paramount+ TV show, talked about how she worked around the harsh filming conditions in Montana and Texas.
“There are no bathrooms, so it’s better to be in a tent,” Pfeiffer said of filming scenes in open terrain.
“Even the barn isn’t real, so there’s no air conditioning, no plumbing, nothing. But it’s amazing.”
“It took us a while (to get used to it) because we built that hut. Everyone was in a bit of a hurry, so we didn’t have certain accommodations set up,” she later said.
“We didn’t really have a trailer because we were shooting 360 degrees. So we couldn’t put a lot of trailers.”
“There was really no place to sit,” she continued. “There were no toilets nearby, there was no food. And it was cold in the winter. It was like, ‘Can you turn on the heat?’
“And in the summer, it was like, ‘Can I buy an umbrella because the sun is so strong?'” It took me about half a minute to figure it all out. ”
Pfeiffer plays Stacey, the matriarch of a wealthy New York City family who makes a life-altering decision after a devastating tragedy in the first episode.
After losing her family, Stacey and her family leave Manhattan and head to rural Montana’s Madison River Valley to recover.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in March, Pfeiffer explained that taking on the project was a “huge leap of faith” for her as there was no script for the series, as (creator Taylor Sheridan) wanted to cast first and write later.
“[Taylor]wanted to know who Stacey was before we started writing. I wanted to know who Stacey was before I committed. And we went back and forth like that for a while, and it became clear that we weren’t going to win this battle,” Pfeiffer said.
“So I asked Helen Mirren (who previously appeared in Sheridan’s Yellowstone spin-off 1923) to tell me about her experience.”
Pfeiffer said she turned to Millen because “I needed to know something specific about this guy, this project.”
“And she just glowed. She couldn’t say enough good things,” Pfeiffer recalled of Mirren. “She said the script was great and the direction was perfect.
“She was having the time of her life. She loved Montana. So I took the plunge and decided, ‘This guy has a pretty good track record.’
“The Madison” became Sheridan’s biggest series launch in history, with its premiere episode reaching 8 million global streams in its first 10 days.
The final three episodes of the first season were released on March 21, and the show was renewed for a second season a few days later.
