Patrick J. Adams is one of the most versatile actors working today. In TV alone, audiences have seen him play the loveable underdog in Suits, the unashamed villain in Accused—and now in The Madison, the charming comic relief. But thanks to Patrick’s casting, that’s not all the character of Russell McIntosh is. He becomes, over six intense episodes, an emotional touchstone for the audience to remind them that there’s some hope out there somewhere.

In an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, Patrick spoke about his approach to the character of Russell and the world of The Madison. He reflected on how he connected to the Paramount+ show on a personal level, and what gave him one of his most memorable days on set in his entire career. Plus, he told us what he learned from Suits that served him well on this new adventure.

And entering the Taylor Sheridan universe was indeed an adventure for him. “I know, obviously, of Taylor and know his prolific success, but I wasn’t aware of what the story was really about in Yellowstone—because at first, it was a Yellowstone spinoff,” he explained. “That’s what we thought it was. And then it turned out not to be. I was just along for, let’s figure out what this is, but it sounds very, very interesting to me, and then got to read the first script and find out what the story was.”

The Madison offers a multi-layered exploration of grief, as the Clyburn family loses their beloved patriarch Preston and Preston’s brother Paul in a plane wreck. Russell is connected to this tragedy through marriage, doing his best to support his wife Paige and the rest of the family in their time of need. As it turns out, there couldn’t have been a better person to play the role than Patrick. Not only because he’s such an emotionally open actor that he makes the character immediately relatable, but because he could also directly relate to what the Clyburn family was experiencing.

“We had lost my stepfather Andy in a very, very sudden fashion, and our whole world had been turned upside down by that loss,” he explained. “I’d also been raised by women. I have two sisters. I have three daughters now. I’d just spent my full year being around and with my mom and helping her to navigate this complete life change, and being with my sisters and trying to figure out what life looked like after he was gone.

“[It] just felt like fate. The scripts just arrived, and I understood instantly who this guy was, to some degree. And I guess Taylor agreed.”

That connection comes through in Patrick’s performance; there’s a quiet vulnerability to Russell’s character that manifests itself in the later episodes. But he also brings something else important to The Madison: a necessary dose of levity. Russell is the character who is most clearly out of his element, and his valiant attempts to figure things out lead to a lot of early laughs. In some ways, he’s the stand-in for the audience: a person who genuinely has little idea what’s going on, but genuinely wants to help.

Without his presence, the show would have been unbalanced and even more emotionally challenging to get through. Instead, the combination of Sheridan’s writing and Patrick’s acting created a character who isn’t just generating jokes; he’s providing the audience hope. Not everything that’s happening is terrible, and even when things are terrible, there’s somebody there that’s going to do his best to make them better. Playing Russell gave Patrick a new opportunity: being the comic relief.

“That really came into clarity once I was there,” he said. “I think it’s clearly on the page, but for some reason, it didn’t really come into clear focus for me until I got onto set.

“As a middle child, I’m acutely aware in my whole life of how to make things okay for everyone. I’ve done that my whole life. When do you want to make people laugh, and when do you have to take care of people? That’s sort of been my lot in life,” he continued. “I got to set and I felt very strongly, I’ve got to make people laugh here, because there’s so much else going on. Even as the character; he’s like, I’ve got to lighten the load. I’ve got to give people something to giggle at for a second. That came very naturally to me, and Taylor gave me so many amazing opportunities to do that in these scripts.

“It’s funny, because I felt like I got to be funny in Suits, but I’ve had people reflect back to me that that sort of got stripped away more and more and more, and so I’m happy to be able to be of service to [The Madison] in that way, if that’s what it means.”

It’s intriguing to trace Patrick’s continued growth as an actor between that breakout role in Suits and portraying Russell McIntosh in The Madison. Mike Ross was indeed a pretty funny guy, but it was often in a sarcastic or sometimes flippant kind of way, and what audiences saw over seven seasons was Mike maturing as not only a lawyer but a human being, That was the real arc of the series, was that innate goodness in him coming out past the persona. And if one looks at his guest appearances in the final season, they’ll see how Patrick re-approaches the role with that additional layer of maturity—but also gravity.

In contrast, Russell is a character who’s already gone through that process and accomplished a lot for himself, but within a very specific framework. Preston’s death and everything that comes after it throws a grenade into that, and his way of dealing with the chaos is to look for something positive to hold onto. Because honestly, someone in the show has to. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a serious side to Russell. The depth of his love for the family and of his compassion particularly emerges in the last two episodes of Season 1, starting with Preston and Paul’s funeral.

“That was a profound thing to shoot,” Patrick reflected. “I didn’t have anything that I had to particularly do but be present in that scene, but having gone through a version of that scene with my own stepfather, and just being in that space with this incredible crew and this unbelievable cast—and that was a very complicated scene to shoot… There’s horses, there’s a carriage, there’s 50-plus actors that all have different responsibilities at different times. We have five cameras going. We have Mother Nature doing its thing. It was a very complicated scene that I was, in all honesty, not looking forward to shooting. I was like, this is going to be a long and chaotic day of having to reset all this stuff. That’s going to be crazy. And it was one of the most beautiful days on set I’ve ever had.

“Everyone was just so prepared. [Barry Clifton], the actor who gives the speech at the funeral, unbelievable. He had to do that maybe ten times throughout the day; every time he had us in tears. It was just an example of being in a place where people took it so seriously, and everybody was doing their job at 100 percent, and that really stuck with me. I had very little to do. I had to walk and hold [Elle Chapman]’s hand and stand there with her and just be present in this experience—but I couldn’t have been more engaged and just grateful to be in this space with these people who are all so talented.

“Honestly, that happened a lot. Anytime you see all of us together, I’m having the same experience of just looking around like, whoa. This is not normal this soon in a show; shows take a long time for people to find that level of comfort and familiarity, and you’re working with the camera department and you get to know them better, but we all just fell in really, really quick.

“And then any time I got a scene alone with Michelle, there’d be something pretty remarkable about that. We have a scene in a in a bar together in the second half, and that meant a lot—to just get to share a moment privately with her. That was great.”

That scene in “No Name and a Dream” is one of the most fascinating beats in The Madison Season 1, because it says a lot for a moment that’s largely inconsequential to the plot. Stacy and Russell visit a dive bar around the corner from Russell and Paige’s apartment, and Stacy abruptly asks Russell what his goals are. It’s a question that flusters him, not only because it’s unexpected—but audiences see him have to think about it. In this small moment, Patrick shows the contemplative side of Russell. This is the one scene where viewers are privy to how profoundly Preston’s death has affected him individually. When he’s talking about kids and how he felt that Stacy and Preston’s marriage was the example to aspire to, there’s a real sense of hurt there. As well as hoping for something that he now knows he’s missing. There’s an incredible potential in that scene for the character in the second season, so how does Patrick perceive Russell now?

“As an actor, I’m drawn to any character now that has somewhere to go. I learned that very much on Suits; there was a long way for [Mike Ross] to go, but I was in a rush to get there, too. Okay, he’s a liar. He’s a fraud. He’s in this law firm, let’s go,” he told us. “My favorite character on Suits is Louis Litt… and getting to watch Rick [Hoffman] do what he did with that character, and where that character sort of starts as almost an antagonist. By the end of it, he could make you laugh and he could make you cry, which is brilliant.

“I think I took a lesson away from that, and in this, saw the opportunity to do something like that. I was like Russell, I don’t know where he’s going. There’s a bunch of different places, but wherever he ends up has got to be pretty far from where he starts. It’s just impossible for him to stay in the same place. That was exciting as an actor. So I have ideas—I have things I’d love to see him do, I have scenes that I’d imagine playing out—but I’m really open to whatever.”

That’s a very Russell way of looking at it. The most engaging thing about the character of Russell is that no matter what happens, he’s ready to give it his absolute best, which is something every viewer can aspire to. And that genuine feeling in the character comes from the actor playing him. No matter what role he’s playing (even that unredeemable villain in Accused), there’s an authenticity that Patrick J. Adams brings. He comes into every part with an openess and a thoughtfulness, ready to see where it takes him. He is constantly evolving as an actor, because he’s prepared to do that. Russell McIntosh could have easily just been the comic relief or Paige’s husband, a supporting player, but Patrick’s casting is what elevated him to someone whom the audience wanted to invest in. And now he’s looking forward to where both he and his character will get to venture when The Madison returns for Season 2.

“I’m just super-grateful,” he told us. “A person in their life, you’re lucky enough to get like a Suits moment, and that’s it, and it goes away. And that’s what they put on your gravestone. I’m just feeling very, very amazed and grateful that I get to have this whole other experience on [The Madison]. It’s obviously got Michelle and Kurt and Taylor, and you’ve got people who are on a whole other level, in terms of the work they’re doing and what their output is.

“Suits was a different energy. It was a lot of people, not first-timers, but it was a lot of people who, this was their moment. This was the thing that was going to make them. It was [creator] Aaron [Korsh]’s first real show. All of us kind of building it together as we went. To step into a show with heavy hitters, but still feel that same ecstatic creative energy that you feel when you’re starting something new, it’s really exciting.

“It’s cool to think these people have been doing this for years, but everyone still gets so excited to invent a new world and build these characters, and now welcome people into it,” he concluded. “I’m stunned that I get to do it again. Super-grateful and praying that audiences fall in love with these people the way that we fell in love with them.”

The Madison Season 1 is now streaming on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Featured image by Nathan J./Courtesy of The Lede Company, The Madison image courtesy of Paramount+.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.