The dust has settled on The Madison finale, but the emotions are still running high. 🌊💔 Beau Garrett is opening up about that powerful ending and what it truly meant for Abigail’s journey of grief and rediscovery.

Spoilers ahead for season one of The Madison.

In the final scenes of The Madison’s first one, Stacy (Michelle Pfieffer) skips out on the memorial for her husband (at her own apartment!) and hops in a cab, no destination in mind. Her daughters Abigail and Paige (Beau Garrett and Elle Chapman) wait up for her to return, but she never comes back. She leaves her cell phone behind, and no one knows where she is. Tearfully, Abigail calls the police to file a missing persons report. (Viewers quickly learn that Stacy has gone to Montana, but her family doesn’t know that yet.)

It’s an emotional cliffhanger for the six-episode first season of Taylor Sheridan’s latest series, but fear not: The show has already filmed a second season.

“So many of my friends and family and people I haven’t heard from in ages have been reaching out saying how touched they are by this show, which is so cool,” Garrett tells Town & Country. “We knew we made something really special … We had two years to do it, which is so rare—two seasons under our belt before the world got to see it.”

Here, Garrett opens up about the finale, what drew her to Abigail, and teases what’s next in season two.

Let’s start at the end: Why does Abigail file a missing persons report? Does she really thinks her mom is gone?

Abigail has no idea what her mom is capable of at this point in time. I think that there is a real fear that she is somebody who might not want to be on this planet anymore—that has been something that’s been sitting with her since they got to Montana. And I think it is the reason why Abigail is so focused on trying to be there for her because I do think there’s an instability that she’s not recognized before in her mother. And so the missing persons report, I think it’s all-encompassing: She is missing in a lot of ways, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. There’s a real fear that she does not want to be on earth anymore.

Did you know that that scene was going to be the last moment of season one when you filmed it?

No, I didn’t. They had originally rewritten it. They recut it in watching the edits to leave it where she’s back in Montana, but what does that mean? What does everyone else do? Where are we all going to be?

They changed it while we were shooting season two, so I knew it would end there, but it changes everything in the beginning of season two for us, because originally it was written that we go find her. So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays and how they cut it. Obviously, we shot season two, so we know what happens, but the audience doesn’t.

What can you tease about what’s next for Abby in season two?

I felt that season one was upheaval, chaos, gray areas, uncertainty, and volatile emotions—that crazy unpredictable [experience of] grief. Season two, there’s a lot more levity. I do feel like season one has a lot of humor and levity and places that you don’t expect it, but it still has this through line of loss that comes up in unexpected ways, which makes this story so beautifully written. But yeah, I think that season two, you’ll find that there’s a settling in a sense; we’re more immersed in this Montana life that is very different than what we know. There’s been bits of that in season one where you see the hornets or things that are so outside of this family’s comfort zone. There’s more dabbling into that world and dabbling into Montana people and life and culture. And what does that look like for this family who is clearly not in their comfort zone?

A lot of viewers are rooting for her and Van. What does it feel like to be the main love story of a series?

 

While in Montana, Abigail falls for local sheriff, Van, a widower and single father of two boys.

The pressure’s there. I’ve never had to fall in love on screen; that’s a really interesting thing to play. I’ve been with my husband for six years. We love each other deeply, but that falling in love thing goes away at time. You fall in love with bits of them as you dive deeper into relationships and having a baby and getting married and all these big steps, losing family members… when you’re with someone, you really go through the gambit of loss.

We’re really protective of their story, both Ben [Schnetzer, who plays Van] and I are. We really care a lot about these two characters, and he’s also suffering from massive loss, and they are both so broken. As an actor, you really want to protect that. The stakes are high for the two of them, whether they really acknowledge or not. But this idea of clinging onto a lifeboat because there’s hope in it and potentially a future, which I know that Abigail doesn’t believe in because [she thinks] how could she end up with someone in Montana? But I think there’s a part of her that’s really hopeful.

[In season two] you feel the love between the two people and the heartbreaking reality of it. I think that that battle continues, but you definitely get to lean in more to their story in the second season and their hope or second season and their hope for finding some type of way to be together, but it is obviously met with challenges.

What drew you initially to the role of Abigail?

I mean, so many things drew me to it. In all honesty, I had had a baby and I hadn’t worked in a while. I live in a very remote town on Vancouver Island. I’m from Los Angeles, but I had really done an Abby in that I had left my life and moved to a very small place and had a baby and have been adjusting to this different lifestyle. And I love where I live, but it is very different. There’s one urgent care, you can’t give birth here. I had to leave to give birth. And if really you get hurt, you have to be helicoptered out. And it is a really different life. I mean, we live on the edge of the planet. There was something to me that really resonated with this two worlds that I thought was really interesting.

I really love Abigail’s sarcasm. I find that’s something that I think is so attractive and so defiant and funny. And her way that she’s such a quiet, subtle character who takes a lot before she explodes. And I thought that was really interesting. I loved the kind of child dynamic between Paige and her and these brawls that happen, five-year-olds just going at each other.

I also loved this mother-daughter dynamic that I found to be really invoking and complex and heartbreaking, and I really related to it. It was a story that I hadn’t really told before and was excited to dive into it and see what it creatively pushed me towards. Michelle Pfeiffer was always somebody that I had admired. She’s such a fantastic actress and I’ve watched her in so many different films over my lifetime and never would’ve thought she’d be a mother figure to me.

And then I mean, Taylor Sheridan! I’ve been a huge fan of his work for a long time and it was always the dream: “One day I’ll be on a Taylor Sheridan show and I’ll ride horses into the sunset.” And I don’t know that Abigail’s going to do that, but this is pretty damn close to that dream. I’ve always been inspired by his work. Obviously, he creates material that lots of people love, and there are haters for sure. You can’t avoid that when making anything.

But I really fell in love with the people, I fell in love with Montana. It’s a place that I’d never been to that I really was like, “Oh, I kind of want to know it.” And now I’m so deeply in love that my husband is allowing me potentially to look at property if we go to season three, because I really connected to it. I’m a hiker, I’m a runner. My child loved it. I mean, she was one when I got it, and now she’s three. So she’s grown up three months of the year there.

What was it like working with Michelle Pfeiffer as your mom?

I still pinch myself. She’s so captivating. She’s just so interesting to watch, and she carries so much into these moments. And we didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time. Sometimes we would get scripts while we were shooting, so there wasn’t a lot of time to prep, but this whole cast fell into step really quickly. And we all had a really beautiful chemistry and dynamic that is just a gift. It’s not something you can create. It was just there.

The stakes were so high working with her, because she would always show up ready and things would be different every time. And so you just have to listen. And I really think that is half the battle of acting, is actually getting out of your own head and paying attention to what somebody else is doing. The mother-daughter relationship was super clear really quickly. And if anything, it was made more complex when I met her because I was like, okay, there’s these elements that I didn’t anticipate I would feel in these moments, and that shapes who potentially I was when I was a kid and how she treated me and how we treated each other. She’s a fantastic human and a fantastic person and just so wonderful to work with.

What do you hope to continue to explore with Abigail and her journey?

Abigail is such a romantic, and I hope that she finds love. I really do. That doesn’t mean just specifically with Van, but I think in general that I want to see her just laugh. I want to see her laugh and let loose and feel alive and connect with the earth. And I think these are parts of Abigail that maybe were deep down in her that she got from her father and never knew until she came to this place and was like, “Oh, I kind of resonate with it.” I want her to get on a horse. I want her to be uncomfortable and do uncomfortable things and push herself because she’s never really pushed herself. And that’s something that I think would be really interesting to watch her do—is just to try different things and maybe find something that she loves because she’s been searching for identity for a really long time.

source: townandcountrymag.com