I had already begun to dabble in the world of Western stories because when I met my husband, I started working on a documentary about young cowgirls, and that was my first time going to Montana. That was my first time going to a rodeo. That had happened prior to my joining on Yellowstone. I was very much an East Coast girl that thought I would never leave New York; in the process of discovering the West, I discovered a great deal about myself and what my preconceived notions had been, who I thought I was, and what I thought was important.
When Taylor sent me the script for The Madison, not only did it resonate as someone who’s gone through the loss of a parent, but also someone who has reinvented what their understanding of their place in the world is based on discovering a landscape I never ever thought I would have a place in.
Do you think he was writing Abby’s story [the character is played by Beau Garrett] with you in mind?
No, I mean, I think there are probably more of those stories than you would think.
Oh, trust me. I’m ready to leave Los Angeles and move to Montana after watching this series. Montana seems lovely. Maybe I’ll meet a cowboy there. [Laughs.]
Yeah. When I met my husband, people who had known me for five years were like, “What are you doing? This is never going to work.” And people who had known me my whole life said, “Actually, this kind of makes sense.”
But no, I don’t think I inspired anything in The Madison. There are things in my life that made me a really good candidate to tell that story. There’s a lot in the Abby storyline that I can relate to. It was funny; my husband was the animal coordinator on the show and was the person giving people riding lessons and working with Kevin [Zegers] and Ben [Schnetzer] as they were finding their characters. I remember having conversations with Ben and Beau, going, “Okay, so when I had this conversation with my husband.…” It’s a very rare thing to be able to tell a story that you feel so connected to.
What was your wedding like, and the merging of families?
We got married in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, in 2015. The script I should write someday as a rom-com is my husband and his cowboy posse from Texas and me and my Brooklyn mafia of artists descend on an island in Mexico and hilarity ensues. It was really a wonderful mash-up of these two very different groups of people that never would be partying on a Mexican island together if we hadn’t decided to get married. It was very much a meeting of two very different worlds. And my marriage has been that. We were recently in New York for the premiere of The Madison, and I brought Jason, my husband. He’d never been to see a Broadway play. We went to do a tasting dinner at Restaurant Daniel. On the flip side, I’ve learned about team ropings and rodeos and shipping cattle. We live on this expansive land out in West Texas. Every winter there are bottled baby goats that are suddenly living in our kitchen. Nothing in my life prepared me for what my world was going to become meeting my husband.