Men's Lifestyle March 21, 2026 0 Comments

How Kevin Zegers’ Journey in The Madison Unlocked a Power Within That Changed Everything Forever

Ever wonder what it takes to claw your way back from the brink—not just in life, but in Hollywood’s unforgiving spotlight? Kevin Zegers’ journey isn’t your average actor’s tale of glitz and glam. Nope, it’s a wild ride from shooting hoops with a basketball-playing mutt in Air Bud, to wrestling with demons that almost wrecked him. Imagine fighting tooth and nail for a role that everyone—including the show’s creator Taylor Sheridan—thought just wasn’t “your part.” Yet, against all odds, Zegers locked eyes with that character while standing in the sweeping Montana fields next to Michelle Pfeiffer, and it hit him: this role was his lifeline. Sobriety, self-discovery, and a fresh purpose in acting now fuel his fire, shining through in The Madison as he helps a grieving widow navigate her darkest hours. It’s more than a comeback—it’s a testament to resilience, empathy, and finally finding where you’re meant to be. Curious about the twists and turns that brought him here? LEARN MORE.

8 min read

Kevin Zegers fought like hell for his role on The Madison. At first, he didn’t think he was right for the part of cowboy Cade Harris—and neither did creator Taylor Sheridan. “The response was like, ‘He’s great, but not for this,’” Zegers tells me. “But something compelled the actor to get back on the horse and chase the role anyway. “I didn’t really want the job,” he says, laughing. That’s the funniest part to him, looking back. “I just felt like I knew what his purpose was in the story,“ he says, “and the only way I could prove that was to sort of say, ‘Not that I think you’re wrong, but I know I can do this.’”

It wasn’t until Zegers was standing next to Michelle Pfeiffer in the fields of Montana’s Madison River Valley that it finally hit him. The role—a helpful stranger who guides Pfeiffer’s character through a journey of helplessness and grief—was a perfect fit. “It’s not a secret,” Zegers admits now, “but yeah, that’s just most of my life.”

Zegers is referring to what after he starred in a megahit ’90s children franchise. If you’re struggling to put a finger on it, Zegers is indeed the kid who used to volley alley-oops for a basketball-playing golden retriever in Air Bud. But after leading his athletically gifted animal companion to multiple state championships across four Air Bud films, the Canadian actor’s transition from child star to meetings with Christopher Nolan couldn’t have been more fraught.

Zegers most of his twenties struggling with alcohol addiction and crippling self-doubt. He nearly bankrupted his life in more ways than you could count. Then, he sought treatment, got sober (now celebrating 15 years), and created a new life for himself—which includes sponsoring others through their recovery. Thanks to The Madison, he’s enjoying acting for possibly the first time ever.

Patrick J. Adams

“It’s given me a purpose,” Zegers says about working on The Madison. “I’m so much happier to go there and just be of service.”

Zegers and I are having coffee in the lounge of the Oriental Mandarin hotel in New York City. It’s a Tuesday afternoon following the Paramount drama’s premiere in early March, and from the friendliness of the wait staff, it seems like the cast had a decent party the night before. Zegers orders a non-alcoholic beer and gushes about how close he’s gotten with Pfeiffer. It’s like he’s a kid again—just excited to see how the sausage is made.

“It’s given me a purpose,” he says. “Our vibe was just sort of like, What do you need from me? If [Pfeiffer] wanted to run lines, l would drive in and read with her. Playing Cade, maybe with my experience in recovery and sobriety, I’m so much happier to go there and just be of service.”

When I ask how he eventually convinced Sheridan that he was right for the part, Zegers says that he’s actually known the TV creator since hie early twenties. “He was an acting coach then, and he would help me get ready for auditions,” Zegers says. “I had his email. And when I sent in another tape, I grew my beard out and I put dark circles under my eyes, just talking to the camera as the character. I just had some empathy to tell his story.”

If that isn’t kismet enough, Zegers’s most prominent scene in the series so far also felt ripped from the pages of his own experience. After Pfeiffer’s character, Stacy Clyburn, loses her husband in a horrific plane crash and moves to Montana, Zegers plays a sort of neighborly angel who just wants to help someone in need of a shoulder to cry on. In episode 3, Cade talks Pfeiffer’s character down as she cries in her car, gun in hand, by revealing that his best friend took his own life. As it turns out, Zegers recently lost a friend to suicide.

“My friend Chris shot himself like a year before I read the script,” Zegers tells me. “Dealing with suicide—it’s a weird thing because you’re angry. There’s a lot of resentment, there’s some disappointment, but there’s also empathy for how bad it must have been for them. So, when I read that scene, I was like, ‘God, I really need to do this.’ I felt like [my friend] Chris was sort of calling me to.”

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

Cade continues to be Stacy’s crutch as the series continues—helping to plan the funeral, provide food, and pick her up when she collapses at her late husband’s grave. It’s not unlike the service that he provides for people struggling in real life. When Zegers isn’t not working, he hosts sponsorship meetings at his home and he’s always available if a friend in recovery calls.

“My friend Eric Dane just passed away a couple weeks ago,” he says. “I knew him from recovery, and his friendship was just such a gift. I spent my whole life thinking if I just get all the stuff that I think I want, I’m going to feel happy. [I realized that] the thing that makes me feel best is when one of the people I sponsor calls—and it’s usually nothing to be pumped about hearing—but I pick up the phone, I listen, and I connect with people in a way that I never could before.”

Zegers brought his friend Chris’s nephew to the premiere, who later told him that Chris would have been really proud. “I was like, ‘That’s what I want,’” “ Zegers says. “The best compliments that I got as we finished each season were, ‘I’m so glad that we met, you’ve been so helpful to me.’ Because it’s not just about the work on screen, and that’s how I try to live my life.” In a way, Zegers is still throwing up the ball for the assist.

Below, Zegers shares more about his recovery, his terrifying meeting with Christopher Nolan in 2005, and if he’s involved in the upcoming Air Bud reboot.

Patrick J. Adams

“Everyone was like, Dude, you’re fucking famous, which is a crazy thing for an 11-year-old to be told,” Zegers says.

ESQUIRE: It’s funny to hear you say that you didn’t think Cade was the right part for you at first. It feels like it was written with you in mind.

KEVIN ZEGERS: I don’t think I’d connected the fact that sponsorship could ever apply to my work in acting, because work always felt selfish. Acting was for money, and I’d go to set thinking about what I could extract from every possible connection. Eventually, I realized it was totally contradictory to how I am as a father, or as a husband, or in recovery. And I related to Cade’s purpose. As addictive as the chase of the other stuff used to be, if I go to bed at night and I haven’t thought about myself for most of the day, I’m so fucking happy.

Alaina Pollack’s parents—the actress who plays Pfeiffer’s youngest granddaughter, Macy, in The Madison—thanked you on the red carpet for being a role model on set. Do you think you made the extra effort because you could have really used someone in your life like that when you acted at that age?

Her parents told me that it really helped when she went back to school that she knew I understood how complicated it is. It’s weird for an 11-year-old to know that she can’t call in sick. There’s 250 people on set there waiting for her. I know that feeling. I remember being in the car at 4:00 a.m. going like, I have to be good—or whatever good is—to make my mom happy, and to make the director happy, otherwise this doesn’t happen.

Everyone was like, “Dude, you’re fucking famous,” which is a crazy thing for an 11-year-old to be told. They said you should be grateful. You get to travel around the world, make a lot of money, star in movies. And there were many times where I didn’t feel like that. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt scared and overwhelmed. But even if I had someone to take me to Dairy Queen and tell me it’s all right, like I did for Alaina—who’s the same age as I was when I did Air Bud—I still may have ended up doing what I ended up doing. In retrospect, everyone did as best they could. I know my parents did. But I have the tools now. I can make that connection. And it’s been really joyful to watch her.

If I go to bed at night and I haven’t thought about myself for most of the day, I’m so fucking happy.

11 is such a young age to basically decide your future. Did you enjoy acting at all? Was there a moment when you fell in love with it?

Probably five years ago. I don’t think I knew what it was. I didn’t understand that good actors are willing to allow themselves to be honest. Being a child actor is kind of pretending. You’re so young, like what do you know? Even in my twenties, when I found some success, I remember feeling like, I don’t know if I’m any good. I don’t know if I like this. I met Vincent D’Onofrio on a movie we did together called The Narrows, and he sent me to an acting coach. I was like, Let me just see if I have an artistic bone in my body. Let me just see if I can get better and recognize it in myself. And I’m not just just saying this: this is the first time where I felt that lock in.

Jeff Kravitz//Getty Images

“A lot of the scars we have are there for a reason, and I’m in a place now where we can just let Air Bud be Air Bud,” Zegers says.

But even when you were winning awards at Cannes for Transamerica, or meeting with Christopher Nolan, you didn’t feel that you had the talent?

I was terrified. Subconsciously, I told myself I couldn’t do the job. Also, my drinking got out of control, but I can’t even tell you the number of movies I screen-tested for that turned out to be fucking monster hits. I was objectively doing really well, but it was also the most clinically depressed as I’d ever been. My self-preservation was that I couldn’t end up on a Christopher Nolan set because he would know when the rubber hit the road that I had no idea what I was doing. All those screen tests, I was so scared, and I started to sabotage myself. I fucked them all up, and I’d be dead had I done Mission: Impossible or any of the other things that were circling around my orbit at that time. I couldn’t handle it.

Now, the reality is just that I’m happy to be at home with my kids. I can spend five months on set in Montana, go home, and coach my kid’s baseball game tomorrow, and that’s it. It’s enough. D’Onofrio told me once: “If you can do one thing a decade that’s like magic, you’ve had an incredible career, because most people don’t get one.” He said, “Even though you didn’t enjoy it, let’s say Transamerica is that thing. Maybe Air Bud, because people love that movie. If you can have three or four things you’re proud of when you hang it up, then you fucking did it.” And last night at the premiere [for The Madison], I was happy l because I was like, Maybe this is one.

There’s an Air Bud reboot in the works. Have they asked you to come in for a cameo? Would you want to?

There was some conversation. They called while I was filming The Madison like, “Maybe we’ll fly you in and have you standing in front of the statue of Air Buds.” But I’m not involved. I was like, “I don’t know if that feels right.” I’m not cynical or angry enough of my child actor days to not feel like, Listen, those movies provided a lot of joy for a lot of people. And frankly, in spite of how difficult being a child actor was for me, I am still here. There’s no reason I should be in this hotel having coffee with you or celebrating a TV show that I got to make with Taylor Sheridan. A lot of the scars we have are there for a reason, and I’m in a place now where we can just let Air Bud be Air Bud. It feels great.