- Kevin Zegers stars as Cade in ‘The Madison.’
- Taylor Sheridan’s new series also stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell.
- Kevin drew on personal experiences for one of the show’s most emotional scenes.
Taylor Sheridan is one of the most powerful storytellers of the present day, but what he brings to screens across the world is never merely fiction. While shows like Yellowstone, Landman, and Mayor of Kingstown may not be true stories, many of the threads that weave the plots together are based on real-life scenarios and statistics—the agriculture, land disputes, and greed in Yellowstone, the gritty and dangerous reality of the oil industry in Landman, and the prevalence of prisons and the business of incarceration in Mayor of Kingstown. In operating this way, Taylor writes series that are not only entertaining but informative, too. And while his latest series, The Madison, is in an intimate, grief-stricken, dramatic, Wild West realm of its own, it,too, highlights reality. Beyond the overarching narrative on grief, the series notably sheds light on the pervasiveness of suicide in the modern day—something actor Kevin Zegers, who plays Cade Harris, is all too aware of.
***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD***
As a refresher, The Madison follows the affluent, New York-based Clyburn family on a journey to rural Montana in the wake of a life-shattering tragedy. Stacy Clyburn (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the family matriarch. She is the mother of two adult daughters, Abigail Reese (Beau Garrett) and Paige McIntosh (Elle Chapman), and grandmother to Bridgett Reese (Amiah Miller) and Macy Reese (Alaina Pollack). In the first episode, Stacy becomes a widow when her husband, Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell), unexpectedly passes away in a plane crash with his brother Paul (Matthew Fox) while on a fly-in fishing trip of a lifetime.
Following her husband’s death, Stacy is forced to grapple with her new reality. To do so, she beelines to Montana, where Preston had been vacationing before the plane crash. Where she feels consumed by unshakable sorrow, she also navigates the days following his passing with remarkable strength and gratitude for the partner she’d built a life with, and the passion he had for Big Sky country. But when Cade, Preston and Paul’s neighbor, came across her with a gun in her hand and nothing but knowledge of her loss, he couldn’t help but assume where her head was at. Rather than force her to talk about her experience, though, he chose to share a snippet of his own: He lost his father to suicide and is all too familiar with the fallout that accompanies such a heartbreaking act. It was one of many moving moments in The Madison, and something Kevin wanted to perfect in his character’s portrayal.
“When I got this job, my friend Chris had killed himself a year before, and it was very fresh,” the 41-year-old actor tells Country Living. “So, when I read that scene, especially, there was this idea of wanting to communicate—because it’s not anger, you’re not upset; you can understand the pain of wanting for it to just be over—but I liked the idea of communicating that there’s a fallout around the person, and I think maybe that’s what she responds to.”
Early on in the 6-episode series, Stacy recognizes kinship and safety with Cade, from the way he candidly spoke about his personal experience to offering his ear, hand, and truck for anything she needed assistance with during the grief process.
“Even with my friend Chris, what I’m proud of about that relationship is that there wasn't a judgment of his desire to not be here anymore—and I think in that scene with Michelle, especially, [Cade’s] not lecturing her about the state that she's in; I think he's just explaining that he's been there and had some experience with it, too,” Kevin explains. “[Suicide] perpetuates our society, especially right now, and I think, because I’d had such a recent experience with it, I really felt compelled to want to do that scene well, and in a way that felt honest to me.”
According to the World Health Organization, more than 720,000 people die due to suicide every year. The Madison, as a whole, beautifully navigates conversations about life, love, and loss. If you’re struggling, seek help and call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
