Starring in a Taylor Sheridan project had long been a goal of Patrick J. Adams, but when it finally happened he had no idea how personal it would be.
The Canadian actor, best known for playing opposite Meghan Markle for seven seasons of “Suits,” had just arrived at his family’s cottage in remote Ontario to spend some down time. It was his first visit there since he and wife, actor Troian Bellisario, had taken over the home from his mother after the loss of his stepfather.
“My mother and my stepfather, Andy, had this beautiful place that we had gone to for the last 20 years and they would spend their summers there,” Adams explains on a recent afternoon in New York. “And it’s pretty remote and far out there, and you kind of have to know how to take care of it. And because he passed away, my mother was like, ‘I can’t do it. I’m not going to do this alone.’ And Troian and I talked about it and we were like, ‘I think we should give it a shot.’”
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It was on their first day of their initial visit to the cottage since owning it that Adams received an audition for a show from the “Yellowstone” creator called “The Madison,” about a family navigating the loss of their patriarch.
“When I made the tape, we didn’t even have the script, so I didn’t even understand how similar the story was yet. So it wasn’t surreal in that moment because in that moment I just got some scenes to shoot and I was given a rough idea of what it was about. But then as it became more real, they sent the script and it was like, ‘oh my god, this is what I’ve been living through over the last two years,’” Adams says. “You end up involved in the things that you’re supposed to end up in and that’s proven true for me, and that certainly seems to be the case with this cast. Everybody’s bringing a very particular life experience that I think informs what they’re having to do on screen.”
“The Madison” stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn, a wealthy Manhattanite whose world is turned upside down when her husband Preston, played by Kurt Russell, dies suddenly in a plane crash in rural Montana while visiting his brother’s ranch. Together with her two daughters, son-in-law and granddaughters, Stacy travels to Montana to deal with the aftermath of his death, and, no surprise given the Taylor Sheridan of it all, spends more time out West than originally thought.
Adams, who stars as Russell, Stacy’s son-in-law, had auditioned for previous Sheridan projects without booking anything, so wondered if he just wasn’t right for that world. He decided to make a tape and have fun with it, and then fully intended to forget about it.
Instead, Adams was off to Montana later that fall to shoot Season One of the show, which premiered its first three episodes on Paramount on March 14 and releases part two on March 21. The cast has already shot Season Two, the release date of which has yet to be set.
“I think it drew my attention to how easily we can want to do things alone, how I can want to do things alone,” he says of how he related his own grief to the Clyburn family’s. “I’m an introvert and I think we all are, in our own ways, isolators in the world we live in. And I think the thing that makes us isolate is tough feelings. We live in a world where when things are really hard, we kind of want to get quiet and small and get into our phone and get distracted and kind of numb out. And I loved what this show had to say about that, which was you are dead in the water if you try to do that. Those things that you think serve you and that are helping you are no use to you in a moment when you really need it. And so this family’s put into a really precarious and brave new world where Stacy’s really saying, ‘this is it. We have to connect.’”
It mirrored what Adams had come to realize with his own family after the loss of his stepfather.
“I had already gone in my own grieving process and found my own way towards that, which was like, ‘I need to be more connected with my family on a regular basis. Life is short and we have to do this together.’ But when I read the script, it was just made so clear to me,” he says.
“The Madison” is rich with shots of stunning Montana landscapes, which fans of Sheridan’s projects have come to expect, but Adams is excited for people to experience the intimacy of their story.
“[This story] is really about a family. Not that all of his shows aren’t about a family, but they grow out into a lot of other things. And this is a show that’s really dealing with the family, dealing with each other, and that’s about it,” he says. “[It’s] much more personal, much more quiet in a way, but huge in that it’s dealing with really, really big ideas about what pulls us together and how we grieve.”
Adams, who just welcomed his third daughter with Bellisario, has been on the road promoting “The Madison” for weeks, attending premieres from London to New York and Toronto. Once the show is fully out he’s planning to spend lots of time hugging his daughters and in his studio taking photographs, a lifelong passion, while audiences hopefully fall in love with the series.
“This is one of those beautiful shows I’ve ever seen shot. Michelle Pfeiffer’s on another level. Michelle and Kurt together are on a completely different level. Her performance in this is going to go down in the record books,” Adams praises. “And I’m just so honored to be anywhere near that.”
