Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell are sharing the screen again more than four decades after their last movie together.
The former spouses reunite in the Western comedy Last Train to Fortune, which begins its New York theatrical engagement on September 17. It marks their first film together since 1983’s Cross Creek and their first since their 1990 divorce, according to Page Six.
McDowell admitted he did not know what working with Steenburgen again would feel like after so many years. Once they began rehearsing, he said the familiarity returned almost immediately and described the experience as “like putting on a pair of comfortable slippers.”
Steenburgen and McDowell met while making 1979’s Time After Time, married in 1980 and had two children together before divorcing a decade later. Both have since remarried, but McDowell has continued to describe Steenburgen as a close friend.
Their First Rehearsal Together Felt Immediately Familiar
McDowell told PEOPLE that the chemistry he remembered from Time After Time was still there when he and Steenburgen began rehearsing Last Train to Fortune. He described their working relationship as supportive, with each actor comfortable following the other’s ideas during a scene.
Producers had originally wanted McDowell to call Steenburgen himself and ask her to join the movie, but he let someone else make the call. When she arrived on set, she immediately asked why he had not contacted her personally. McDowell recalled answering, “Well, you are here, aren’t you? So it doesn’t matter who called.”
Steenburgen also helped refine the scene they shared. She plays Miss Maybelle, who has been teaching local children before McDowell’s Cecil Peachtree arrives to take over the school. Steenburgen pointed out that Maybelle could not appear too accomplished as a teacher or there would be little reason to hire Cecil, something McDowell said he had not considered.
They First Met While Making ‘Time After Time’
Steenburgen and McDowell first worked together in Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time, with McDowell playing H.G. Wells and Steenburgen portraying Amy Robbins. Their relationship developed during production, and they married the following year.
They appeared together again in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek in 1983, with Steenburgen playing author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and McDowell appearing as editor Max Perkins. They did not make another feature together before their marriage ended in 1990.
The former couple share daughter Lilly and son Charlie McDowell, who became a filmmaker. Steenburgen married Ted Danson in 1995, while McDowell has been married to Kelley Kuhr since 1991. McDowell has said both are happy in their current marriages and that his friendship with Steenburgen continued after their divorce.
‘Last Train to Fortune’ Spent Decades in Development
Michele Rifkin wrote Last Train to Fortune in the 1980s, when the project was intended to reunite McDowell with director Lindsay Anderson. Bill Paxton was attached to play gunslinger Dooley opposite McDowell, but the film remained unmade through Anderson’s death in 1994 and Paxton’s death in 2017.
The project eventually moved forward with Paxton’s son James taking over the Dooley role and Adam Rifkin directing. McDowell plays Cecil Peachtree, an educated English schoolteacher stranded in the Old West who pays Dooley to help him reach the town of Fortune. Their journey takes them through gunfights, saloons and jailbreaks while an unlikely friendship develops.
The film’s official site identifies education and the freedom created by knowledge as central themes. The movie also stars Bernadette Peters and Laura Marano. Its New York theatrical engagement begins September 17, followed by Dallas on September 23 and Los Angeles on September 25.
