CNN
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When Margo Martindale signed on to star in Prime Video’s new black comedy series “The Sticky,” out Friday, she didn’t realize how dramatic maple syrup could be.

In fact, in a recent interview with CNN, the “Cocaine Bear” star opened up about learning that the Jamie Lee Curtis-produced series was inspired by a real-life heist from 2012 – which involved the theft of $1,000 worth of maple syrup $20 million came out of a warehouse in Quebec – Martindale initially found it hilarious.

“Honestly, I knew almost nothing about maple syrup and certainly nothing about the raid,” Martindale said. “When I found out the robbery was a real thing, I cried with laughter. This is wild!”

When Curtis Martindale personally called and asked her to sign up for the lead role in the series, she had to say yes.

“She was incredibly supportive from the start. She loves giving gifts. She loves to play. She’s a smart, strong force of nature,” Martindale said of Curtis, who also makes a wacky guest appearance in a delightfully chaotic episode.

“The Sticky” deviates slightly from the actual 2012 incident, made clear by a cheeky disclaimer at the start of each 30-minute episode that the series is “absolutely not the true story of the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Robbery.”

The six-part series centers on Martindale’s character Ruth, a courageous maple syrup farmer in Quebec who is on the verge of losing her farm and finds herself at odds with the greedy head of the association (the fictionalized version of the Federation of the United States) Quebec Maple Syrup Producers , a government-regulated organization) while caring for her sick, comatose husband.

She teams up with Remy, a dim-witted security guard (Guillaume Cyr), and American wannabe gangster Mike (Chris Diamantopoulos) to deplete the association’s maple syrup reserves in a high-risk heist.

But Martindale doesn’t view Ruth and her cohorts as criminals.

“We only commit a crime because we push ourselves to the limit,” she said of her character’s predicament. “We are committing a crime for the good of our families.”

As the true story of the so-called “Great Canadian Maple Syrup Robbery” goes, approximately 3,000 tons of maple syrup were slowly and quietly siphoned, barrel by barrel, from the reserve warehouse of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, according to Quebec police in a statement at the time.

According to the association that manages the world’s only strategic maple syrup reserve, up to 80% of the world’s maple syrup comes from the region.

The theft was discovered during a routine inventory check of the warehouse when officers discovered that a significant amount of the barrels that originally contained the syrup were empty, leading them to conclude that the syrup had been transferred to other containers during the robbery .

According to the Guardian, Quebec police arrested 16 people in connection with the crime at the time. The ringleader, Richard Vallières, who planned to resell the stolen syrup in smaller quantities for a profit, was found guilty of fraud, human trafficking and theft in 2016 and subsequently sentenced to eight years in prison.

According to the CBC, Vallières was also ordered to pay a $9 million fine, which he must pay off within a decade or face another six years in prison.

The incident was the subject of a 2018 episode of the Netflix documentary about corporate greed and corruption, “Dirty Money.”

“People wanted to sell more of their maple syrup. Why couldn’t they? “That was because it was regulated by the state,” Martindale said. “That was fascinating to learn.”

All six episodes of “The Sticky” are available to stream on Prime Video.