The actress tells EW all about having to “scream and run and grab my ass” on her very first day of filming.

The Madison’s Elle Chapman breaks down that hilarious hornet scene: ‘You really have to commit’

The actress tells EW all about having to “scream and run and grab my ass” on her very first day of filming.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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March 17, 2026 1:00 p.m. ET

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Elle Chapman as Paige McIntosh in 'The Madison'. Credit:

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

Elle Chapman is buzzing with excitement as she talks about *The Madison’*s* *hilarious hornet scene.

The 28-year-old actress tells ** that she filmed her character Paige’s ill-fated attempt to use the family’s wasp-infested outhouse on her very first day on the Taylor Sheridan-penned drama.

“That was my first day of shooting. It was our first day in Montana, my first day working with [series director] Christina Alexandra Voros, who's amazing, and the crew,” Chapman recalls, chatting for EW's latest digital cover story on the new drama. “And it was actually a pretty great scene to start with because it's so high energy and you really have to commit.”

Patrick J. Adams as Russell McIntosh, Elle Chapman as Paige McIntosh, Beau Garrett as Abigail Reese, Alaina Pollack as Macy Reese, and Amiah Miller as Brigitte Reese on 'The Madison.'.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

After arriving in Montana following the unexpected deaths of her uncle Paul (Matthew Fox) and dad Preston (Kurt Russell), Paige is the first member of the Clyburn family to brave using their outdoor toilet and immediately pays the price when she is repeatedly stung in the groin by the hornets living in the latrine.

Chapman thought the scene was hilarious from the moment she read it. “I think Paige is really funny, but she doesn't know she's being funny,” she explains. “And so I think with the outhouse scene, she's just trying to survive in this environment that's very foreign to her and not maybe doing her best job.”

The scene, which required her to “scream and run and grab my ass” as she high-tailed it from the outhouse back to the cabin, also taught Chapman an important lesson about her character. “What I really learned with Paige is if you don't commit it doesn't work. It can seem like a caricature,” she says, noting that she tried to play the role right “on that edge where you're still trying to be a real person, but also [where] she feels things really strongly.”

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Thankfully, Chapman wasn’t the only person dealing with hornets that day. Patrick J. Adams, who plays Paige’s husband Russell, also filmed a scene where he valiantly (read: poorly) tries to kill the hornets with bug spray in her honor and ends up getting stung in the face.

“We would film mine and then we would go film his shot of him running the second time to kill them,” Chapman elaborates. “And so we both got it out of our systems where it wasn't just me screaming in front of this whole 200-person crew and then him doing a normal scene.”

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She also spotlights how Russell and Paige remain a unit even when experiencing hardship, from the loss of a parent to getting brutally stung by wasps.

“People, hopefully, can resonate with when you have a partnership with someone, you guys are in it together,” she adds. “Whether that be normal life situations or maybe a swarm of hornets that's gonna ruin your first couple days in a new state.”

Patrick J Adams as Russell McIntosh, Elle Chapman as Paige McIntosh on 'The Madison.'.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

Chapman admits, though, that it was pretty hard not to bust out laughing while filming a subsequent scene in which Paige’s mom, Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer), tends to her wounds in the shower.

“The scene with Michelle in the bathroom, in the aftermath, I was breaking a little. I struggle to break more than the rest of the cast. I feel like Michelle's really good at not breaking,” she says. Then, taking on a teasing tone, she adds, “Obviously, she's a pro. I think she's done this before.”

Voros, who serves as both director and director of photography on *The Madison*, tells EW that, as a writer, Sheridan tries to "create characters that people will love and then do crazy things to them."

She continues, "You fall in love with each of the characters in the show in their own ways, but the struggles that each of them come up against are very specifically crafted for them in so far as they are the things they are least equipped to deal with. And watching them try to deal with something that they have they don't have the tools to deal with is at times heartbreaking and at times hysterical."

The first three episodes of *The Madison* are streaming now on Paramount+.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Drama”