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In 2017, cinematographer Christina Alexandra Voros heard about a new show that sounded intriguing: a drama about a ranching dynasty, shot on location in Montana. She wanted in.
So, she reached out to a colleague she hadn’t spoken to in years to ask if she could join the team. She even offered to take on a more junior position than her usual role as a director of photography.
Voros was hired as a “B camera operator.” At first, she was excited, but the transition was rough. “I spent the first two weeks convinced I was going to get fired because I didn’t understand the politics, I didn’t understand the scope of something that large,” she recalls. “I remember calling a mentor of mine … weeping, going, was this a step backwards? I’m not part of the creative voice of the show.”
The show, of course, was Yellowstone.
Big Sky & Bigger Career Moves
Christina Alexandra Voros is grateful she stuck with it because not only did Yellowstone become a massive hit, but Voros’ talent behind the camera also caught the eye of series creator Taylor Sheridan. Throughout the hit show’s five-season run, he continually promoted her and brought her into his inner circle.
She became a director of photography and a director on Yellowstone. She did the same on four episodes of the Yellowstone prequel, 1883, earning an Emmy nomination for her cinematography.
For her latest project, The Madison, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, she serves as executive producer and directs all six episodes of the first season. Voros described the series, written by Sheridan, as a “story about love and grief and family and the way tragedy can reinvent us … It’s also a real meditation on the power of land to transform us.”
These days, she is a driving creative voice on a show, just like she wanted.
A Little Help From Ava DuVernay
All of this success is even more surprising when you consider that Voros wasn’t originally thinking about film as a career. A theater kid at heart, she graduated from Harvard intent on pursuing acting and was accepted to a graduate program in theater. A friend suggested that film school would be perfect for her talents, so she also applied to NYU Film School, almost as a lark.
“I had no desire to be a director,” she said, adding she was not “a technical person.” At that point, she didn’t even know what a cinematographer did. She left her NYU interview convinced it didn’t go well. Two weeks later, she was offered a scholarship. She deferred her theater program for a year, went to NYU, fell in love with filmmaking, and never looked back.
Voros went on to build her early career in the indie film space, shooting projects for James Franco and Tate Taylor. But a pivotal moment came when Ava DuVernay invited her to direct an episode of Queen Sugar on the Oprah Network.
“She created an incubator intentionally to give women directors an opportunity to direct television who might not have otherwise been given an opportunity,” Voros has explained. “There was this myth that you can’t direct television until you’ve directed television. And so her goal was to sort of bust that myth wide open.”
Among the other female directors whom DuVernay tapped for Queen Sugar are Amanda Marsalis (The Pitt), Demane Davis (Brilliant Minds), and Kat Coiro (Matlock).
Christina Alexandra Voros on the Demands of Being a Director
Voros embraces the job of directing, which she acknowledges can feel non-stop. “You make a lot of decisions in the day,” she says simply. She has a formula for managing the scale of some of these shoots, which can include crews, cast, animals, and often sweeping Montana landscapes. It’s a deep trust in the people around her.
“I believe there are two kinds of people in the world,” Voros says. “People who choose to surround themselves by people who are better and smarter and more inspired than they are, and those who choose to surround themselves by people who are less so, so that they can shine. I want to be the least shiny person in the room.”
Working in the Western genre has also meant mastering an entirely different kind of logistics. When she directed her first episode for Yellowstone, the script called for 200 mares and foals “cascading down a mountain.” When asked if she planned to storyboard it, she laughed. “We’re going to get five cameras, and we’re going to run 200 horses down a mountain,” she told a producer. “It’s not like they’re going to hit their mark or stop when you ask them to. They’re horses.”
On The Madison, directing for Voros meant “four months of nonstop every day. You don’t really get a moment to catch your breath.” The shoot was made more complex because of emotional scenes that began as exteriors in Montana would be finished, two months later, on a soundstage in Texas.
But having her vision fully realized throughout the first season was especially rewarding. “It feels like making a six-hour movie. It feels like telling a complete story. It’s a beautiful experience to have,” says Voros.
Steering Spinoffs For Yellowstone & Tulsa King
Voros says she’s already finished shooting a second season of The Madison. Her current focus is the highly anticipated Yellowstone sequel, The Dutton Ranch. That project stars Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser and follows their characters, Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler.
She is also preparing to take on Frisco King, a spinoff of Tulsa King starring Samuel L. Jackson.
After all of the television episodes she’s helmed, Voros is still grateful for every single opportunity. She knows it’s a gift that she can make a living as an artist.
“Life is short and mercurial, and you never know what’s going to happen next. I have very talented friends who haven’t worked in three years because the industry is changing,” Voros acknowledges. “I have a very hard time saying no to work because I never take it for granted that something else is right around the corner. You just don’t know.”
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