How Did Christina Alexandra Voros Bring Taylor Sheridan’s “The Madison” to Life on Paramount+?

From the creative mind of Taylor Sheridan, The Madison is a stark juxtaposition of life for the Clyburns as they are yanked from Manhattan to Montana and what it means for the family. The show is a meditation on resilience, transformation, and reinvention. The series stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Beau Garrett, Elle Chapman and Ben Schnetzer.

Director and executive producer Christina Alexandra Voros has worked extensively with Taylor Sheridan on Yellowstone and 1883 and now directs the entire season. Christina shares her insights into what makes The Madison such a special show.

You’ve been fortunate enough to have been part of the Taylorverse for many years. During your interactions with him how has Taylor informed your sense of storytelling?

I started as a camera operator on Season One of Yellowstone, and I was familiar with Taylor as a screenwriter from Sicario and Hell or High Water. I never in a million years imagined that our paths were going to cross. I ended up on that first season because Ben Richardson was the DP and a colleague of mine.

Christina Alexandra Voros. Photo by Crystal Wise

I was a New Yorker who grew up on the East Coast. I ended up meeting my husband on a movie in Mississippi. He’s a cowboy and a wrangler. And next thing you know, I am making westerns in Montana. I think that Taylor’s influence on my career is undeniable. I have been lucky enough to be working with him as a writer and as a producer for eight years.

I’ve done 30 episodes of television for him as a cinematographer and as a director. But the thing that I have taken away from our collaboration the most over the years is he holds on to truth with all of him. He fights for what he thinks is correct until the bitter end. I feel like I have learned more from him as a general than as an artist at times.

He is fiercely loyal. He is undeniably proud of those artists that he chooses to work with. I have seen him fight for actors, for stuntmen, for focus pullers, for hair and makeup designers. He knows who he wants to work with. He knows who he trusts with his vision. And he fights for those people incredibly loyally.

It is something that is rare. I think it’s something that’s beautiful. I consider myself very lucky to be part of the family that he has created.

Discuss your initial conversations with Taylor Sheridan in terms of the scope and spirit of The Madison.

There’s so much in the scripts themselves. There is so much DNA of what the show wants to be, not just in the dialogue, but in the way Taylor writes scene descriptions and action; the way he describes characters.

We have conversations about certain nuances of locations or the objective in a certain scene. But I feel I have come to understand his intent on the page so clearly that there are a lot of conversations that you might think would be happening that in fact aren’t.

The location of Stacy’s Valley that is so prominent in the show was so clearly described on the page that you sort of knew it when you found it. We looked at a lot of different places and when we finally found it, it was like, “This is it.” This is exactly what was written. This is exactly what the intent of this place is that had to be so perfect because it carries so much of an emotional weight in the show.

There’s a lot in the DNA on the pages that are its own magic decoder ring as to how to approach the heart and the soul of the series.

Discuss Preston and Stacys’ Clyburn’s relationship with Madison River Valley.

It’s funny as someone who grew up on the East Coast in a very urban environment and discovered the wide open spaces of the West myself, I feel like I have a profoundly personal connection to this show and the way that our environments teach us who we are in ways that are sometimes unexpected. I discovered a great deal about myself when I moved to West Texas that I did not know about myself when I lived in Brooklyn. And I think that is part of the reason Preston is so in love with the Madison River Valley.

I think it is a side of him that he is not allowed to have or feel in New York. And I think it is something that Stacy doesn’t realize she would have loved until perhaps it is in some ways too late, and in other ways just the beginning.

I think that it is a beautifully universal experience to recognize another side of yourself when you are taken out of the environment that you are convinced is the only place you can exist. Suddenly find yourself in a place that you never saw yourself stepping foot into and recognizing the way that it can change us.

I think that being out in nature allows us to slow down. It takes away the distractions that prevent us from looking inwards. It forces us to deal with each other and ourselves in a way that we do not have to in a very busy urban center.

I think that there are realizations that come out of that transplanting that are at the heart of this story, and also the heart of a lot of Taylor’s stories.

Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) Photo by Emerson Miller/ Paramount+

The Madison shuttles between the present, the past and the future. How did you navigate these timelines?

Preston’s journal is such an important talisman in this story. It is the portal between the present and the past.

It is a portal between the past and the future. It is a window into the soul of a man that Stacy Clyburn (Michelle Pfeiffer) thought she knew everything about and then discovers this one uncovered facet of his life that was not shared with her at the time, but almost seems faded in the way it is shared with her now.

You have to ask yourself, what would her experience have been like if she hadn’t found Preston’s journal, and if she hadn’t had these love letters that she was able to read at this very difficult moment in her life that connects her not only to him and a version of him that she did not necessarily fully understand while he was alive, and now is a love letter between her and the land that she is discovering.

That device is very powerful and is the magic decoder ring that connects space and time, past, present and future for Stacy in the show.

Talk about the distinct relationship between brothers, Preston, Paul and the sisters, Abby and Paige. 

I’m an only child and so I have always had a tremendous amount of envy for those who are not. I always wanted an older brother, which was problematic. You can’t do anything about that when you’re a kid.

I think there’s something about both the dynamic between Abby (Beau Garrett) and Paige (Elle Chapman) and Preston and Paul (Matthew Fox) that I found a great amount of joy in exploring. Taylor Sheridan has siblings and you can tell from the way that he writes these characters and the way they love each other fiercely, they fight with each other fiercely, they support each other, they judge each other, and they love each other. At the end of the day, siblings often know you more intimately than you may know yourself.

It’s beautiful watching both relationships of ebb and flow. This is a show where we see the messy, vulnerable parts of people. You can only be messy and vulnerable if you feel safe enough to be that way. You are seeing the rawest versions of these characters in each other’s company.

Paige McIntosh (Elle Chapman) Photo by Emerson Miller/ Paramount+

Aside from grief, what themes are you exploring in The Madison?

I think grief is the doorway into what is ultimately an exploration of who we are and what our purpose and place is in the universe.

Who are we when you take away the world that we identify as being our home. Who are you when you take the city away from someone who identifies as someone who has mastered the game of the city? Who are you as a wife when you no longer have your husband? Who are you as a daughter when the father that has bestowed upon you the praise that you have lived for disappears? It’s a stripping down of what it means to be a human being, what it means to love the people that you love when you take away the layers of armor that we use to define ourselves in society.

I think it’s a heady thing. It’s a lot easier to say it’s a story about grief, but I think grief strips away everything that we use to protect ourselves from the hardship of the world. Grief breaks through that and forces you to reckon with who you are without the things that identify you the most. I think this story allows you to watch that experience through the lives of every one of the characters that is moving through this space.

What is beautiful about the story is we are allowed to go with these characters, not not only during the stripping down, but during the discovery of who they are underneath. That is where the hope comes from. It’s finding joy in places you never expected joy to exist because you were too afraid to go to the place to look for them because it was so outside of your comfort zone.

I think it is inspiring, certainly for me as someone who grew up in a city I never thought I would leave, and have found so much joy living out in the wide open spaces of Texas or Montana or wherever my career has taken me. To get to do that viscerally through these characters is a real gift.

Is there an episode that speaks the most to you?

One of the gifts of getting to direct the entire series is it ceases to exist as episodes in my mind anymore.  Taylor Sheridan likes to say that in his shows, the goal is to be creating a multi-hour film as opposed to thinking about them as episodic television.

Even doing press for the show, I’ve had to go back to my notes and go, wait, was that episode three or four? Because it’s all one story for me. I think there’s a cohesiveness to this series that is probably part of the reason that it’s being released the way that it is – in quick succession so people can experience the story from start to finish. Because once you dive into it, you just want to keep swimming until you come up to the surface.

There are moments in every episode that brought me to my knees directing them emotionally – to be able to witness the places that this incredible cast were willing to go in terms of portraying the vulnerability and the messiness of these characters. But it really is one long love song to me.

Paul Clyburn (Matthew Fox) Photo by Emerson Miller/ Paramount+

Discuss the healthy respect of differences between the city and country life without judgement. 

I feel like our universe could use a lot more of that right now. I think we live in a world where a lot of people capitalize on polarizing people’s differences against each other instead of appreciating them and understanding them. That relationship is very personal to me.

I was a East Coast gal who met a West Texas cowboy and swore I would never wear cowboy boots and would never move to Texas. And I have a Texas driver’s license now. Life is short and things can change quickly.

I would add to that list of suggestions to never say never. My husband and I wouldn’t have checked a single box the same on an online dating profile. There are certain topics of conversation that we still try to avoid at the dinner table.

But we have more in common with each other than we don’t. And we live in a world that is constantly trying to prove how different we are from each other. It’s really refreshing to see a story between two people who have nothing in common in the way that they were raised, in the place that they live, in the things that they prioritize, but as human beings can find comfort and love in each other. I think that’s a lesson that we should be celebrating more.

I thought I was a hipster from Brooklyn. And it turns out that there’s a little cowgirl from West Texas in me. And being in that part of the country and opening myself up to a complete change in my lifestyle and my landscape changed my life.

I am a teller of stories. I’m a maker of westerns. And if I had not been able to think outside of the box that I thought was my kingdom in New York 15 years ago, I wouldn’t be here having this conversation.

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.