There’s good and bad news for Party of Five star Matthew Fox. The good news: He’ll star alongside Michelle Pfieffer in Yellowstone spin-off The Madison, expected sometime in 2025. The bad news: A recent Fox photo was used to announce the casting, and fans have some things to say about it.
According to Deadline, Fox will play Paul on The Madison, a project previously referred to as 2024. The show will be set in central Montana’s Madison River Valley, and follow a New York City family living in the area. Fox reportedly plays Paul, a bachelor and avid outdoorsman. Patrick J. Adams, Elle Chapman, Beau Garrett, and Amiah Miller, are also in the cast.
As well as Party of Five, people know Fox from Lost, where he played the heroic Dr. Jack Shephard, a role that earned Fox Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Fox’s career has been relatively quiet since he announced his retirement in 2015, and as news spread on social media that Fox would be back on TV in The Madison, some fans noticed he didn’t look quite the same as he used to.
“He aged like milk,” one comment said
Fox was 58 when The Madison casting was announced, and according to several social media comments on Variety‘s story, he looks every bit his age. Comments included, “Damn..he aged like milk,” “He looks 70,” and “Jesus he’s an old man.” In Party of Five, which premiered in 1994, Fox played handsome Charlie Salinger. Fox also leaned on his good looks as Jack Shephard, leading those island-bound plane crash survivors on Lost. But, it seems, time has caught up with him. Not everyone jumped on Fox’s looks, however. “Nice to see Fox back it’s been a minute,” one comment said.
What about those domestic violence allegations?
The internet has a long memory, and the announcement that Matthew Fox joined The Madison cast also brought up the 2012 scandal when Fox’s Lost costar, Dominic Monaghan, accused Fox of “beating women” in an X post (then Twitter). In 2012, Monaghan wrote in a comment, “He beats women,” referring to Fox. “Not isolated incidents. Often. Not interested,” he added.
Monaghan’s allegations likely referred to an Ohio incident when Fox punched a party bus driver in the groin and chest when she tried to block him from entering the vehicle. The driver filed a lawsuit, but it was later dropped, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
That scandal was brought up in the Variety comments announcing Fox joined The Madison cast. “Why isn’t his DUI and alleged [domestic violence] ridden past enough to cancel this guy?” one person wrote. Back in 2012, Fox called Monaghan’s accusations “bullsh*t.” That same year, Fox was arrested for DUI near his home in Bend, OR.
Fox came out of retirement in 2022
Scandals aside, The Madison isn’t Fox’s first project since he announced his retirement in 2015. In 2022, Fox returned to acting in the Peacock series Last Light. The next year he appeared in the Australian TV series C*A*U*G*H*T. As for The Madison, it’s unclear if it will be on Paramount+ or Paramount Network. Yellowstone writer and creator Taylor Sheridan is attached as executive producer on the series.