“For a Cliffhanger, You Couldn’t Do Better:” ‘The Sticky’s Margo Martindale Knows You’re Gonna Want Season 2

The Big Picture

• Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with
  The Sticky
  co-stars Margo Martindale and Guillaume Cyr.
• Prime Video’s
  The Sticky
  is a crime comedy series inspired by the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.
• During this conversation, Martindale and Cyr discuss filming in Montreal, hint about Season 2, and talk about Martindale’s upcoming role in a JonBenét Ramsey series.

Three-time Emmy Award-winning actress Margo Martindale has found herself in a sticky situation. Well, her lead role as Ruth Landry in Prime Video’s The Sticky has, at least. The series, by creators Brian Donovan and Ed Herro, is a crime comedy inspired by the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist — something Martindale’s French-Canadian co-star, Guillaume Cyr, recalls seeing on the news years ago — and has a distinctly Fargo feel to it.

In the show, Ruth is a maple farmer going toe-to-toe with bureaucratic authorities looking to take her property. Pushed to her limit and at risk of losing everything, Ruth teams up with Mike Byrne (Chris Diamantopoulos), a hot-headed mobster, and Remy Bouchard (Cyr), a sweet security guard still living at home with his father (Michel Perron), to steal millions of dollars worth of syrup.

Before The Sticky‘s streaming premiere, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit and talk with Martindale and Cyr about their time filming in Montreal, working with the crew, and the preparation leading up to it. They discuss how the show deviates from the true story, the future of their trio and Season 2, and Martindale’s upcoming JonBenét Ramsey series with Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen.

Robert Duvall Thought Margo Martindale Was a Pit Girl on ‘Days of Thunder’

COLLIDER: I’ve watched the whole series. I’m just going to say congrats and thumbs up.

MARGO MARTINDALE: Thank you. We’re very excited for people to see it and to see how they respond.

I think people are going to be positive there, no doubt. Before I jump into the series, I like throwing some curveballs at the beginning of every interview.

MARTINDALE: That’s what we want.

Margo, I’m actually going to start with you. Early in your career you did Days of Thunder and The Rocketeer , and I’m just curious what you remember about making both of those.

MARTINDALE: Well, I remember Days of Thunder sitting in a chair, freezing my ass off with a stopwatch. I remember Robert Duvall’s assistant calling me and asking me to go to lunch, like, three times, and I declined because I thought, “I can’t go to lunch with Robert Duvall because I’ll make an ass of myself.” Then I was flying home for Christmas, and who was I sitting next to? Robert Duvall. And Robert Duvall said, “What are you doing on this plane?” I said, “Well, I’m going home for Christmas.” He said, “You’re not the real pit girl at the racetrack?” I said, “No, I’m actually an actress.” [Laughs]

GUILLAUME CYR: That’s a good story.

MARTINDALE: He said, “Oh, really?” He said, “I wanted to talk to you because I thought you were a real person that could actually…” I guess he thought I was just the pit girl, and he was looking for people who were not actors to be in a movie called The Apostle. So, there you have it.

I don’t know if you would have gotten the role once he found out you were an actor.

MARTINDALE: [Laughs] No, that was the end of the conversation. No, I was not going to get the role. And The Rocketeer, I had a wonderful time on that movie. It was a great movie, really. I formed a friendship with Alan Arkin on that movie, and we continued it through the years for quite a while. At least two of his sons I’m really good friends with, Adam and another one of his sons, Matthew. It was very sad to see him go. I loved Alan.

I absolutely concur, and I’m a huge fan of The Rocketeer . It’s just one of those films that has a great tone, and it’s fun and all that stuff.

MARTINDALE: All that stuff. And that guy was great — Joe Johnson.

The director, yeah, he did a great job with that.

MARTINDALE: Great job.

Both of you have done a number of projects. What is one that you wish more people had actually seen?

MARTINDALE: I wish more people had seen Blow the Man Down, and I wish more people had seen The Hollars.

Oh, yeah, by John Krasinski.

MARTINDALE: Yeah. Sexiest man alive, you know.

I’ve heard that rumor. Guillaume?

CYR: For me, I’m a French Canadian actor, so I did a lot of French Canadian movies. I did a lot of great jobs acting in those movies, but we are a small market, so it’s just French people who saw it. I wish many of those movies went to US theaters. So, practically all my French Canadian movies.

‘The Sticky’s Cast Calls the Series “‘Fargo’ Meets ‘Big Lebowski’”

I’ll jump into why I get to talk to you guys. I felt the influence of Fargo on this series. Do you agree with that, or am I completely wrong?

MARTINDALE: You’re completely right. We all feel that. And watching the first two episodes on a big screen last night, it felt even more so that way because I’d only watched it on a tiny little [screen], on my iPad.

CYR: It’s Fargo meets Big Lebowski for me.

That’s one of the reasons why I breezed through this whole series because it’s fun, you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and it just has a lot of surprises.

MARTINDALE: It really does. And it’s, like you say, not predictable at all and completely different from anything we’ve seen before.

CYR: You’ve got comedy, you’ve got drama, but the first thing is the story. You just wanna keep watching it.

MARTINDALE: Yeah. The story’s great.

I agree. Everyone watching this on Collider knows how TV shows and movies are made. What do you think might surprise them to learn about the actual making of this series?

MARTINDALE: Probably that we were really out in the snow, that I was really driving a truck, dragging a tree behind.

CYR: We were on a real maple syrup farm. With a real Canadian crew and real Canadian actors.

MARTINDALE: A mostly French crew. And that the world of this is all Montreal. It’s a very specific terrain and place in Canada. It’s not just Canadian. It’s completely French. It has a real French vibe to it.

I read in the press notes that you two and Chris [Diamontopoulos] had way too much fun filming this and were laughing a lot. Who do you think was the one that ruined the most takes?

MARTINDALE: Honest to God, here’s the truth: I’ve ruined so many takes in my life; it’s absurd. But we didn’t really ruin very many takes. We weren’t cracking up when we were working.

CYR: After.

MARTINDALE: It was actually between.

CYR: Yeah, and we are three hard-to-break actors. You are very professional.

MARTINDALE: Yeah, but I’m not hard to break.

CYR: Well, on that show, yeah.

MARTINDALE: On other shows, honestly, I have a hard time sometimes keeping it together.

Brian [Donovan] and Ed [Herro] have talked about how they’re hoping to do not just a one-season type show. They’re hoping to continue telling the story. How much did they tell you about the full arc of what they’re hoping to do with your characters?

MARTINDALE: They have not. We can have dinner with them tonight and put them over a fire pit and see if we can get something out of them. But, yeah, I’m very curious if we get away with this.

CYR: It’s hard to speak of that without saying spoilers, but we have to sell that syrup one day, you know? So, it’s the way it probably goes.

How Much of ‘The Sticky’ Really Happened?

The series is based on the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.

This story is about the stealing of the syrup, the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, is crazy. At what point did you hear about this, and were you like, “This can’t be true? They stole syrup?”

MARTINDALE: I had never heard about it until I read the script, and I thought it wasn’t real. Then when I was told it did happen, that makes it even that much more fantastic.

CYR: I’m a French Canadian, so it happened two hours away from home. Back in the day, I saw the headline on the news and I thought it was really funny. I completely forgot about it, and after I read the script, I was like, “Oh yeah, the big heist!” So, I watched the documentary. But yeah, it’s just inspired by the real heist. The real heist is the context of the show. After that, it’s completely the imagination of Ed and Brian.

Hence, the Fargo comparison.

MARTINDALE: Absolutely.

CYR: Exactly.

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘The Sticky’ Season 1]

‘The Sticky’ Season 1 Ends on a “Big, Big, Big ‘To Be Continued'”

What did you think about the way that the series ended, and what happened?

MARTINDALE: Brilliant.

CYR: It’s a big, big big “to be continued.”

MARTINDALE: It really is.

CYR: So many unfinished stories. And it’s kind of brilliant because, at some point, you are very happy for the trio, but you have many, many stories that feel like real sadness. My father and I, we don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s a mixed feeling when Season 1 finished.

MARTINDALE: But I think that for a cliffhanger, you couldn’t do better.

What do you think Remy’s going to do when he finds out what happened with his dad?

CYR: I think only Ed and Brian know. His heart will be broken into 1,000 pieces for sure, but I don’t know. I don’t know because he’s too deep into it to go back. So, I don’t know.

I’m just trying to imagine you guys trying to sell the syrup and the hijinx that can happen.

CYR: Just there, you have a Season 2.

MARTINDALE: And let me just say, we will sell that syrup.

100%.

Margo Martindale and Richard LaGravenese Reunite on ‘JonBenét Ramsey’

Margo, I actually have another question for you. I recently spoke to Garrett Hedlund about the JonBenét Ramsey series, which I believe you are playing the grandmother.

MARTINDALE: Yes, Patsy’s mom.

I’m not sure if you’ve wrapped yet. How is that going? What can you say?

MARTINDALE: It’s very interesting. Melissa McCarthy is playing my daughter, Patsy, and Clive Owen is playing John. Richard LaGravenese has written it, and I had done a movie with Richard and he also did one of the segments of Paris, Je T’aime, so we were at Cannes together. I love him, and I think he’s a great writer. I haven’t read all the episodes because he hadn’t written the last two, so I don’t know what we will find out, but I think it’s going to be interesting.

Well, I think the character Garrett’s playing really had strong feelings about who he thought did all this. It’s going to be interesting because it’s a murder that has fascinated the public since the ‘90s. It’s never gone away.

MARTINDALE: It’s never gone away. I have a friend who lived, actually, two doors down from the Ramseys, and so I talked to her about it and I was hoping Melissa and she talked. I don’t know.

Boulder is an interesting place.

I love learning about the way actors prepare for a role. So, for both of you, using The Sticky as an example, what were you doing in the weeks leading up to the first day of filming? Could you talk a little bit about how you get ready for a role?

MARTINDALE: Well, for this, because I’m playing Canadian, I really did a lot of dialect coaching. I don’t know that I hit it as broadly as I should. It’s so interesting when you make choices, and you think you’ve gone way over the line, and you see it, and you go, “Well, I didn’t even go far enough.” All of those sounds that Canadians make, not the French Canadians, but I thought that was important, and I did a lot of work on it.

CYR: For me, the fact that it was my first English gig, I put three times the time on the lines just to read out loud all of my lines always, always, always. I watched Margo’s stuff, I watched Chris’s stuff — I wanted to know their way of acting. And I watched Michael Dowse’s filmography just to know who I’m going to work with, and I watched Fargo just to be in the mood.

MARTINDALE: In other words, Guillaume did a lot more work than I did.

CYR: [Laughs] Well, I was stressed for that gig, so I put three times the work.

MARTINDALE: Also, he and all of the French Canadian actors are doing double time because they’re not speaking in their own [language].

CYR: For many of us, it was the first time in English ever.

You did a great job, so all that work paid off.

MARTINDALE: Absolutely.

CYR: Thank you!

The Sticky Season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video.

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