It’s done already? Tonight, “For All Mankind” launches into its 10th and final episode of an eventful fifth season filled with romantic gestures, explosive action, a Happy Valley rebellion, major food shortages, heartbreaking sacrifices, and a Titan discovery of illuminating proportions.
Wrenn Schmidt and her extraordinary portrayal of Margo Madison, from a bright NASA engineer who becomes the first woman at Mission Control, then director of the Johnson Space Center, to trading Soviet secrets, stealing an asteroid, living as a Russian refugee, then landing in a U.S jail, has to be one of the wildest character arcs ever witnessed in the history of television.
We connected with Schmidt to look back at Margo’s remarkable journey in Apple TV’s flagship sci-fi series, and her five-decade onscreen transformation.
“We didn’t talk a ton about Margo coming back in season five,” she recalls regarding word of her traitorous character’s return from creators Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi, and Ronald D. Moore.
“She’s in the slammer. We talked about it being about Margo being back in jail serving her sentence, and she really hangs her hat on these visits with Aleida. That was kind of it. I’ve always been someone who doesn’t want to know anything ahead of time. I’d get the scripts and just see what was there. It was a weird season because Margo was so integral to everything before. Now she’s more of a supporting character. It was a big shift for all of us.”
After spending the last eight years on “For All Mankind” from the onset, there’s a synchronicity that evolves naturally from being part of an ensemble cast.
“It’s pretty extraordinary to get to play a character like this for that long,” Schmidt explains. “When I wasn’t playing Margo, I really missed her. One of the things that happens when you’re playing a character for such a long time and you’re working with a lot of the same actors, there becomes a shorthand you don’t even realized gets layered in. Like, who is Aleida to me? It was just there. The same was true with Ed Baldwin [Joel Kinnaman] and pretty much everyone I acted with. It gives you a wonderful freedom to focus on other things.”
Often told by her acting coaches to choose ingenue-type roles, Schmidt slipping into Margo’s skin has been a career-defining opportunity. “From playing Margo, I’m actually in a place where now somebody can say, ‘play seventy.’ I’m getting to do a lot of things that are really hard. It was the pleasure and honor of my career to play Margo in her Sixties in Russia. That’s an extraordinary challenge that you don’t come across very often.”
There’s a definite physicality to senior citizen Margo this season, with her shuffling gait in prison-issued orthopedic shoes and her Tootsie Rolls.
“There’s so much to think about when it comes to being in an aging body,” she notes. “Where does she feel good? Where are things painful? I feel like these are things that I’m just beginning to experience. It feels like your body starts to betray you in a way. Especially if you’re someone who’s not been physically active or is physically fit. Margo has time to have hobbies.
“She has time to be interested in stuff maybe she never would have come across before. She listens to Dolly Parton now. She’s exposed to all kinds of things being in jail, because she’s got nothing but time. I always envision that she watches ‘The Price is Right’ every day. That’s her show.”
“For All Mankind” season 5 streams exclusively on Apple TV along with previous seasons. You can also catch Star City, the Soviet-set spin-off show, which debuts on May 29.