‘It’s like magic’: Wisecracking Mrs Maisel is back for more laughs

As it bounces into its fourth season, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Emmy-winning comedy, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, remains a vibrantly colourful series about women making their sometimes-surprising ways in the world. Set in the late 1950s, it stars Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan as the title character, Miriam “Midge” Maisel, a Jewish housewife and mother raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, who has discovered that she can do a lot more than bake a delicious brisket.

At a time when Lenny Bruce was everyone’s go-to stand-up guy – he appears in the series, played by Luke Kirby – she finds, after one inebriated night, that she too can shine on stage with her acerbic observations about life. And then she decides to pursue a career in comedy.

Alex Borstein, also an Emmy winner for her role here (as well as for her voice work as Lois on Family Guy), plays Midge’s grouchy agent, Susie Myerson, and Marin Hinkle is Midge’s image-conscious mother, Rose.

Rachel Brosnahan as housewife-turned-comedienne Miriam Maisel and Alex Borstein as her grouchy agent Susie Myerson in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.Credit: Amazon Studios

“I think that one of the cool things about this show,” Brosnahan says on a Zoom call with her co-stars, “is that resilience looks different on every woman. It can sometimes mean embracing a more vulnerable side of yourself and looking ahead. It can also mean being unapologetically yourself, in the case of someone like Midge, or being a survivor, as Susie’s had to do for so long. And it’s cool to see all of the different ways that resilient women can present on the show.”

Borstein makes no secret of why she’s happy to be part of the series alongside the other two women. “I love that it’s not a show where there’s one token female who has an arc,” she explains. “It has all different women kind of doing the same thing, which is busting out, and hitting and shattering their ceilings, but in very different ways. The way that Rose goes about making changes and breaking boundaries is very different than Susie, but they’re really doing the same thing.”

Alongside Midge, Susie is on her own journey of discovery after the end of the previous season, when there was a significant setback for both of them. “Susie tells Midge everything’s going to be OK, and I don’t know if she even believes that yet,” Borstein explains. But she realises that she’s got to cover herself too, that she can’t just depend on Midge and Midge’s career. So this season she’s not only looking to rebuild with Midge, but to build up her own career, to make Susie Myerson and Associates a reality, and that means taking on some new clients.”

Hinkle (Madam Secretary, Homeland, Two and a Half Men) is equally passionate about her role as Midge’s sometimes-disapproving mum. “Rose is kind of wonderfully baffling,” she laughs. “I wouldn’t have imagined at the beginning that Rose would escape her family responsibilities and all the judgements she has about who one should be, and especially who her daughter should be.
“I loved that in season two she just went, ‘Goodbye, I’m heading to Paris.’ Now she’s saying, ‘Okay, goodbye to the money that I grew up with. My husband’s not working any more, so I guess I have to go get a job.’ I love it. I’ve never been involved with a character that has as much of a turnaround each year.”

“Rose is kind of wonderfully baffling,” says Marin Hinkle of her character. Credit: Amazon Studios

The job that Rose chooses is matchmaking, although the career changes aren’t confined to the female characters. Midge’s father, Abe (Tony Shalhoub), sacked from his university teaching position, becomes a cravat-wearing theatre critic for The Village Voice. And her ex-husband, Joel (Michael Zegen), having given up on his comedy aspirations, is trying to establish a nightclub business.

Unexpected twists are a feature of Sherman-Palladino’s trajectories for her key characters. “I was surprised at a number of points in the season,” Brosnahan (House of Cards, Manhattan) recalls. “We don’t get all the scripts ahead of time; we don’t exactly know how the season is going to unfold. So when we started, I was surprised by certain things. As this season goes on, there’s more than one big surprise on Midge’s journey. Amy had to pull me aside more than once to let me know that something was going to happen so that I didn’t get too surprised at one of our table reads.”

The show’s scripts are particularly challenging because an abundance of dialogue has to be delivered at a rapid-fire pace. In addition, writer-director-producer Sherman-Palladino and her executive-producer husband, Daniel, also a regular writer and director on the show, favour extensive and elaborately choreographed shots requiring precision and perfect timing from the actors, as well as the camera and sound crews.

“It breaks your brain,” says Rachel Brosnahan of the rapid-fire dialogue in which creators and showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino specialise.Credit: Amazon Studios

When asked if they have become accustomed such challenges after four seasons, the three actresses vigorously shake their heads and laugh in unison. “I know that deep into a season, when there’s so little space left in my brain, I can still remember my lines but I’ve lost my keys six times in a day and I’ve misplaced my cell phone and I’ve lost my water bottle and forgotten my dog’s name,” says Brosnahan. “It breaks your brain.“

Hinkle explains, “I still get a kind of nervousness because you need to be perfect with the lines. I find on shows where I can improv, I can relax a bit because there’s something about those mistakes that can be embraced. But here there isn’t really room for a mistake. There’s room for a uniqueness with each take, but you have to get it word-perfect, and that’s different from any other show. So it does keep you really amped. But when it gets there in the right way, it’s like a piece of music or like coasting the way you would surfing.”

Brosnahan adds, “When those big one-ers come together, when everybody’s got every line exactly right and the camera is dancing with us and everyone has come in and out when they’re supposed to and the props are there, as Marin said, it’s like magic.”

Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam Maisel.Credit: Amazon Studios

Over three sparkling seasons, Midge and Susie have formed a classic TV odd couple and Sherman-Palladino and costume designer Donna Zakowska have a lot of fun reflecting that with their outfits. Midge is a chic fashion plate in fabulous frocks, perky hats and carefully co-ordinated accessories. Susie habitually gets about in a three-piece men’s suit and peaked cap, and is often called “Sir” by strangers, who initially assume that she’s a small man. And that stark visual contrast neatly complements the comedy inherent in the witty, screwball-style dialogue.

“I’ve worked on a lot of shows that had a need to be comedic and I’m so appreciative that this is making people laugh and it’s funny,” says Hinkle. “In the room when we’re working, nobody – in the crew or the director – is allowed to laugh. But what’s beautiful is that later, when you watch the show, especially those two, they’re so funny but they’re so serious about what they’re doing. In the moment that you’re working on it, you don’t always see all the comedy. But later you go, ‘Yes! That had a little magical, comedic aliveness.’”

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (season 4) returns to Amazon Prime on February 18.

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