There are plenty of reasons to be excited that Michelle Pfeiffer is currently lighting up the small screen in not one but two shows: Paramount+\u2019s \u201cThe Madison\u201d <\/a>and Apple TV\u2019s \u201cMargo\u2019s Got Money Troubles<\/a>.\u201d Who doesn\u2019t love Pfeiffer? And for reasons both personal (she adjusted her career choices<\/a> after she had kids) and professional (the film industry still struggles to admit that women over 40 have leading role stories), we haven\u2019t seen that much of her in a while. <\/p>\n Now she\u2019s back in all her blond-maned glory and it isn\u2019t just exciting in an \u201calways loved her\u201d way; it\u2019s exciting because Pfeiffer isn\u2019t just returning to television, she\u2019s storming the cultural battlements.<\/p>\n In each of those shows, Pfeiffer gives new meaning to a figure that historically has been a narrowly defined, often to the point of caricature, member of the supporting cast: The grandmother.<\/p>\n Pfeiffer isn\u2019t resurrecting anything; she\u2019s revolutionizing it.<\/p>\n Traditionally used as a Greek chorus to main players, television grandmothers have come in a variety of forms, including the tart-tongued and insightful (Maggie Smith<\/a>\u2019s Violet Crawley on \u201cDownton Abbey,\u201d Jenifer Lewis\u2019<\/a> Ruby on \u201cblack-ish\u201d), the brash and meddlesome (Doris Roberts\u2019<\/a> Marie Barone on \u201cEverybody Loves Raymond\u201d), the fun-loving and unpredictable (Rita Moreno\u2019s<\/a> Lydia on \u201cOne Day at a Time\u201d), the truly wicked (Nancy Marchand\u2019s Livia on \u201cThe Sopranos\u201d) and the I\u2019ve-still-got-it (Susan Sullivan\u2019s Martha on \u201cCastle,\u201d Holland Taylor\u2019s Evelyn on \u201cTwo and a Half Men.\u201d)<\/p>\n As the specifics on this list prove, Granny can be a very important and beloved character who often gets the last laugh if only because she gets the best lines. But very few grandmothers are defined in ways apart from their place in the family and, with a few notable exceptions \u2014 Bonnie (Allison Janney) on \u201cMom<\/a>\u201d and Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in \u201cGrace and Frankie\u201d<\/a> \u2014 they are almost never the leads.<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Madison,\u201d Michelle Pfeiffer plays Stacy Clyburn, a wealthy Manhattanite who decamps to Montana after her husband dies.<\/p>\n (Emerson Miller \/ Paramount+)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n At 67, Pfeiffer, who is also a grandmother in real life, is very much the lead of \u201cThe Madison,\u201d in which she plays the recently widowed Stacy who drags her Manhattanite family, including two granddaughters, to Montana in order to honor, grieve and better understand her recently departed husband Preston (Kurt Russell).<\/p>\n As mother to the Margo (Elle Fanning) of \u201cMargo\u2019s Got Money Troubles,\u201d Pfeiffer is, technically, a supporting player, but her Shyanne is also a fully realized, complex character on her own journey.<\/p>\n The two series are tonally different \u2014 \u201dThe Madison\u201d a Taylor Sheridan drama, \u201cMargo\u201d an adaptation of Rufi Thorpe\u2019s funny, heartwarming novel<\/a> \u2014 and Stacy and Shyanne are, in many ways, polar opposites. <\/p>\n When the Architectural Digest perfection of her well-heeled and emotionally confident life is shattered by tragic loss, Stacy literally does not know what to do with herself. She finds comfort in the last place a self-described \u201ccity mouse\u201d expects to find it \u2014 in the wild majesty of Montana, which her husband loved so well. But even at her lowest, the 61-year-old Stacy is in command of her family (not to mention the many resources that offer her an actual choice).<\/p>\n Shyanne is a bit messier. Where Stacy accepts the burdens and authority of a matriarch, Shyanne spends much of \u201cMargo\u2019s\u201d first season shrugging them off.<\/p>\n A former Hooters waitress whose youthful liaison with married professional wrestler Jinx (Nick Offerman) produced Margo, Shyanne is a Bloomingdale\u2019s clerk with a feisty, recently tamed wild-child vibe and a boyfriend, Kenny (Greg Kinnear). A mild-mannered pastor, Kenny appears to be the reason for the taming \u2014 Shyanne doesn\u2019t want to scare him off by showing too much of her real self. (Going by the narrative, she is likely in her 40s, which, even with the plunging V-neck, sleeveless-skewing wardrobe, Pfeiffer absolutely pulls off.) When Margo is made pregnant by her college lit professor, Shyanne is incandescently not thrilled, in part because she does not relish the thought of herself as a grandma, but mostly because she has been through the wringer of financially precarious single motherhood.<\/p>\n Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning in \u201cMargo\u2019s Got Money Troubles.\u201d<\/p>\n (Allyson Riggs \/ Courtesy of Apple)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Pfeiffer\u2019s ability to bring to life such wildly different women (with at least a 10-year age difference between them) deserves all the applause, but the standing O should be sparked by the fact that these are women we rarely get to see, in any version.<\/p>\n Grandmothers with lives, inner and outer, of their very own. Imagine!<\/p>\n Pfeiffer is not the first to push back against the notion that female characters of a certain age and familial status must wield whatever power they have from the background. In both \u201cMare of Easttown\u201d and \u201cHappy Valley,\u201d Kate Winslet and Sarah Lancashire play police officers who are also grannies; that role affects but does not define them.<\/p>\n But \u201cglamour\u201d was not a word associated with either of those characters, unlike \u201cThe Madison\u2019s\u201d Stacy, who has brought back the messy updo <\/a>and sent women searching for gold-plated hair clips <\/a>and oversize Barbour jackets, or \u201cMargo\u2019s\u201d Shyanne, with her penchant for figure-hugging tops and fake fur.<\/p>\n Obviously, it\u2019s difficult to imagine most mere mortal women of 67 living up to a Pfeiffer standard of face and figure, but that\u2019s not the point. The point is that she is playing women who are still women, <\/i>who have children and grandchildren but also have outside interests, including sex. They are interested in and worry about their progeny, but are just as, if not more, concerned with their own problems and lives, which are continuing to unfold in very real, complicated and interesting ways.<\/p>\n These grandmothers have loads of experience, and some wisdom to go with it, but they do not lurk in the background waiting for their cue to dispense it. Nor do they hover around the main action, loosing barbs of criticism or leering suggestively over their martinis or wistfully reminiscing about the past. Shyanne may be a bit over the top at times, but what she wants, or thinks she wants, is stability. Stacy is doing plenty of reminiscing but it isn\u2019t about her kids; she\u2019s searching for a way through her pain and into a life on her own terms.<\/p>\n Television has long benefited from the disparaging way film has historically treated female actors over 40 \u2014 the TV renaissance of the early 21st century was driven, in part, by female film stars finding bigger and more complex roles on television. And though both film and TV remain, numerically, dominated by male-driven narratives, actors who would have once found themselves confined to supporting roles as the mom or crazy aunt are now playing cops, spies, lawyers, corporate villains, rock musicians and a welter of other action-oriented leads.<\/p>\n But we can thank Michelle Pfeiffer for finally dragging Grandma out of the corner, and the chorus, and onto center stage, where she can strut and struggle like the glorious, complicated, banged up but still growing, fully functional adult that she is.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are plenty of reasons to be excited that Michelle Pfeiffer is currently lighting up the small screen in not one but two shows: Paramount+\u2019s \u201cThe Madison\u201d and Apple TV\u2019s \u201cMargo\u2019s Got Money Troubles.\u201d Who doesn\u2019t love Pfeiffer? And for reasons both personal (she adjusted her career choices after she had kids) and professional (the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2382618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2382617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Michelle-Pfeiffer-redefines-grandma-in-The-Madison-Margos-Got-Money.com2F382F122Ffdf6991045c78661488a872b.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2382617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2382619,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382617\/revisions\/2382619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2382618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2382617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2382617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2382617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/bef1669\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3936x2624+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F50%2F9e%2F184d7bec4307a0f8d560d06cf870%2Fmargos-got-money-troubles-101-01479f.jpg)
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