The 67-year-old actress leads Paramount+'s neo-Western series as family matriarch Stacy Clyburn and decided to take a "leap of faith" to join the cast because of creator Taylor Sheridan's previous involvement in successful series such as Yellowstone and Tulsa King.
"Taylor reached out to me and said he had an idea and would like to meet me," Pfeiffer.
"So I'm off to Texas, I went to his ranch and had a wonderful evening meeting people. He talked to me about the arc of the character and the concept of the show, and it was very broadly laid out.
"I said, 'Okay, when could I read something?'
"He said, 'Well, I'd like to know who I'm writing for before I start writing. So after you commit.'"
"So we went back and forth for a few weeks after that, and I realised at a certain point I was not going to win this battle. I was either going to have to take a leap of faith or take a pass, and I decided to take a leap of faith because he obviously had a very strong track record."
The Madison's early episodes see Pfeiffer's alter ego grieving following the death of her husband Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) and she admits that it was challenging to play such an emotionally-demanding role without taking it away from the set.
"I don't consider myself method. I would find that really exhausting and boring. I like life as well. I love my job, but I don't want to leave my life in order to do my job," shwe .
"But my husband (writer David E Kelley) has said to me, 'You disappear a little bit when you go to work', which I didn't know. I thought I was just tired.
"With this, it was actually a good thing because the first season takes place over six days. She's pretty much in the same state of mind the whole six days, so you kind of enter into that and stay there. I wasn't crying all over the place on the weekend or anything like that, but it's always there gnawing at you a little bit."
However, Pfeiffer did enjoy getting the chance to collaborate with Russell once again after the pair formed a strong bond when they worked together on the 1988 movie Tequila Sunrise.
"He became my comrade-in-arms," she said.
"He was my protector, my confidant, my court jester. He was always there to make people laugh and brings a tremendous amount of joy every day to the set.
"We had a really nice chemistry acting together. It was just effortless with him."
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