Margo Martindale talks maple syrup, 'The Sticky' and new JonBenét Ramsey series

NEW YORK – Margo Martindale's three-decade-plus career is still providing the actress the opportunity to experience things for the first time. For example, thanks to her role on Amazon's "The Sticky" (now streaming), she keeps maple syrup in her kitchen cabinet.

"Am I a fan" of the stuff made from the sap of maple trees? "I am now," the actress, 78, jokes. "Had to say goodbye to Log Cabin and the sugar-free syrups that were in my cabinet."

"The Sticky" is loosely based on the real-life heist of Canadian maple syrup. According to CBC Canada, nearly 3,000 tons of the syrup, valued at $18.7 million, were stolen from a warehouse operated by the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers in 2011 and 2012.

Martindale plays Ruth Landry, a woman running a maple syrup farm with her husband. When he falls into a coma, the future of the farm is jeopardized, sending Ruth off the rails.

"I loved that she started hot and went hotter," Martindale says of her character, who is cussing out a Canadian official when we meet her. "That's an odd place to start a series. But it was challenging to see how hot you can go and then how far you can fall when you fall apart. All of that makes it fun for me."

Another first: Working with Jamie Lee Curtis

Martindale received a call from Jamie Lee Curtis, an executive producer on "The Sticky," about the lead role. Curtis planned to play Ruth, but couldn't because of scheduling conflicts. The two actresses had never met.

"'Who is it that I think would be most like me?' Martindale recalls Curtis asking over the phone. "Then (Curtis) said, 'Margo Martindale.' Then I said to myself, 'In what world?'"

Martindale says Curtis was "pushy," so she agreed to read the script. Then she fell in love with the project. She enjoyed playing Ruth, a character Martindale says is at "the end of her rope," which was a familiar spot.

"It started happening after 'Million Dollar Baby' that people realized that I could be mean, because I'd been so nice most of my career," she says. "Then 'Justified' sort of blew it out of the water. And then 'The Americans': slicing someone's throat and watching him bleed out and telling him why you hate him. It was fun."

Martindale also recalls a memorable scene from the 2023 film "Cocaine Bear."

"I said to (director) Elizabeth Banks, 'What am I doing? I'm crawling around on the ground and being snatched off in a tree? I thought somebody else was going to do that for me.' She said, 'You read the script? You're going to be doing it.'"

In "The Sticky," Martindale chops down a tree before driving to Montreal with it hitched to the back of her truck and whipping it into the glass door of her nemesis' office. She says she did all the driving, minus the aiming of the tree into the door, in about "three or four takes."

Martindale guest starring in JonBenét Ramsey series

Martindale's next project is also based on a true crime story, although it involves a grisly murder instead of a syrup heist. She'll play JonBenét Ramsey's grandmother in a limited series for Paramount+, filming in Calgary. The drama stars Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen as Patsy and John. Interest in the girl's 1996 murder was renewed with the Netflix documentary series, "Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey."

"I think people are interested in what happened," she says of the still-unsolved murder. "I don't know what new light is shined on this (by the series), but I think there will be some."