Madeleine Stowe did not enjoy working on the second season of Revenge and she doesn’t care who knows about it.
Speaking during the lunch-break on a day’s location filming for the third season of the popular US drama recently, the 55-year-old actress candidly admits she found last year’s production “hard going”.
“It is a difficult thing to produce 22 episodes with dense plot points, but last year, we really kind of went off the rails in terms of narrative – the show veered in a strange direction.”
However, the former 12 Monkeys and The Last of the Mohicans star, who plays wealthy, powerful and devious Grayson family matriarch Victoria on Revenge, says she’s been delighted with how the show has been recalibrated and reset this season.
“Things take a really interesting turn plotwise and Sunil (Nayar – Revenge’s Showrunner) has done everything to try to get the show back to its roots and make it character orientated.”
But, she warns, viewers will have to be a little bit patient.
“Sunil and the team really had their work cut out for them, but I think by mid-season we really hit our stride.”
One of the major talking points in America about this season has been Victoria’s relationship with her long-lost son Patrick (played by Smallville’s Justin Hartley).
Stowe laughs off the suggestion that it is bordering on “incestuous”.
“I’ve found the reaction to it very curious because they are just two people who adore one another. Patrick is blindly devoted to his mother and I just can’t believe he’s back in my life – I would do anything for him.”
It’s that internal-character drive that has really reignited Stowe’s passion for the show she says.
“In the first series I really liked that Victoria would do really radical, startling, interesting things and while the first half of this season has been about re-setting Emily’s (the show’s vengeful heroine as played by Canadian actress Emily van Camp) drive, I’m now getting a chance to really put the finger to the flame now.”
When asked whether her husband Brian Benben or daughter May watch the show, Stowe admits that while he will watch it from time to time, 17-year-old May steers clear.
“She won’t watch it – I guess at that age everyone is trying to separate themselves and create their own identity and I think she’s so used to people saying, ‘oh, my god, she looks so much like her mother’ or ‘you remind me of your mother’.
Just as long as nobody thinks her mother is really like Victoria.”
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