It is a proven fact that Texas is a native and national treasure Margo Martindale makes everything she does a little better. She moves effortlessly between stage and screen; She’s great at playing mothers and schemers and both at the same time. She’s so popular that the mere idea of ​​her inspired the funniest running joke of all time BoJack Horseman, where, for six seasons, Martindale voiced a heightened version of herself, always referred to as “character actress Margo Martindale.” The character made such an impression, says Martindale, that her Wikipedia page at one point in 2015 noted that Martindale had “spent the last year in prison for armed robbery.” (Just for the record, that was Cartoon Margo, not the original.)

But if top-notch television has taught us anything, it’s that actors like Martindale are even more successful when they’re the stars of the show. For example, check out her unforgettable storyline in the second season of Justified as Mags Bennett, the matriarch of a Kentucky Holler crime family who is capable of even being permanently cool Timothy Olyphant Trembling in his boots. Martindale won her first Emmy for the role and celebrated her 60th birthday when she accepted her statuette with a fitting quote: “Sometimes things just take time. But with time comes great appreciation.”

Her latest outing is the quirky crime comedy from Prime Video The sticky one, Out December 6, it puts the now 73-year-old actor at the helm of a caper based on the infamous real-life crime known as the Great Maple Syrup Heist. Martindale was unfamiliar with the incident before signing on The sticky one. “I thought it was a joke. It sounds like it,” she tells me over Zoom. “It was fantastic to find out it was real. That makes it much more exciting. I think it’s unique and different, and it has that Fargo-like tone.”

As Rich Cohen explained in his 2016 Vanity Fair In the article about the crime, Quebec produces a whopping 72% of the world’s maple syrup. This made it possible to set the price for this valuable product. “As of this writing,” Cohen continued, “the commodity is worth just over $1,300 per barrel, 26 times more expensive than crude oil.” Canadian maple syrup thieves cleverly stole nearly 10,000 barrels of the substance from Quebec’s primary reserves in 2011 and 2012 : worth 18.7 million Canadian dollars (or about 13 million US dollars), to be exact. The crimes were so Canadian that it felt like a self-parody, as if an old SCTV sketch had come to life and run off with the largest sum of money in Canadian history.

A television adaptation was almost inevitable. The show was produced and executive produced by Blumhouse Television Jamie Lee Curtis– who actually called Martindale out of the blue to get her on board. Martindale recalls the Oscar winner’s pitch and effortlessly conveys a light, precise impression of her: “‘Hello Margo, this is Jamie Lee Curtis.’ There’s a show that I’m producing that I wanted to do, but I can’t do it because of my schedule. I thought: Who is most like me out of everyone I know? And I said, ‘Margo Martindale.'” When Curtis complimented her, Martindale’s first thought was that the comparison seemed ridiculous: “In what world?” she wondered. Still, her fellow actor got Martindale to take on the show before she even read it; Luckily everything worked out.

Martindale is reserved; After all, she is a three-time Emmy winner (she received two statuettes for her guest role as). Keri Russell‘s handler on The Americans), whose IMDb page reflects her work rate, with an astonishing 131 roles since her screen debut in the late ’80s.

At that time she had already made a name for herself in the theater by creating the role of hairdresser Truvy, which was written especially for her Steel magnolias. It is very easy to play Six Degrees of Separation with Martindale, who has dabbled in witchcraft Sandra Bullock And Nicole Kidman In practical magic, squealed “Dewey!” as Ma Cox in the forever relevant musician biopic spoof Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and went head to head Meryl Streep In August: Osage County– and that barely scratches the surface. She has kind words for Paul Newman, who she played with Nobody is a fool (1994) and dusk (1998): During rehearsals for the former, she noted, “I took my sandwich to eat at another table because I was so intimidated by Paul Newman.” Newman later saw Martindale on Broadway, where he played Big Mama Cat on a hot tin roof. “The last time I saw him he said, ‘You’re fucking blowing her off the stage.’ You’re blowing her off the stage.’” She pauses. “Paul Newman. Wow.”