‘Midge is finding out how to use her voice in a whole new way’

Georgia Humphreys and Abdi Moalim talk to the star of hit Amazon show The Marvelous Mrs Maisel

Rachel Brosnahan, 27, has won a Golden Globe, Primetime Emmy and Critics’ Choice Television Award for playing the title role, Midge, in TV show The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, about a 1950s housewife who decides to become a stand-up comic. Returning for a second series, she talks about what fans can expect, women screenwriters, and why show creator Amy Sherman-palladino is special.

How do you feel following The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’s awards success? We were just not expecting that! I thought for some reason that my category [at the Emmys] was after I presented, so I was very calm until they started doing my category, and I was like, ‘What the…?!’ It was totally overwhelming in the most wonderful way.

Are you surprised at how warmly the show was received?

Absolutely. We live in an age of “peak television”. There is so much good content out there, there’s so many shows out there that I love. I imagine that anyone has to be pleasantly surprised when something breaks through.

How would you describe your character, Midge? She feels very relatable.

Midge is a woman who lives with joy, who lives with an innate sense of curiosity about the world and a desire to continue to improve herself within it.

The show is also about her reinventing herself after she already thought she knew exactly who she was. She hasn’t changed at the core, but is finding out how to use her voice in a whole new way – that’s something that feels particularly true of this time.

The premiere of the new series was filmed on location. What was that like?

We started the season in Paris, which was very strange because New York is so central to the show. It

0 Rachel Brosnahan as Midge on stage in …Mrs Maisel

was brilliant, we spent three weeks there. I can’t really say what we were doing there or who was there exactly. But it was great, and I can’t wait for people to see that.

Tell us about the experience of shooting on the streets of New York.

It’s so exciting – I can’t believe that people let us do this. New Yorkers are not thrilled about it sometimes! You can tell from watching our show that Amy [Sherman-palladino]’s vision is enormous, and she loves big single shots [and] “walk and talks”.

What do you think makes Amy such a special writer? She’s so smart. She’s so sharp. She’s a real cinephile; Amy loves movies, she loves storytelling and she’s wellstudied. Part of what makes her writing so brilliant is that everything is on the page. You can picture the world so clearly from reading her writing, and then she brings it to life so clearly with her directing.

female writers in TV now? TV is ahead of the curve in terms of embracing new voices and taking risks. But we have a very long way to go to make the kinds of stories we see in the media reflect the world we actually live in. So many stories have yet to be told.

What about in Hollywood – are things improving for female writers there?

In the context of how lasting change is made, this moment is still young. I think it will be a while before we start to see change activated.

In looking for female directors to work on The Marvelous Mrs Maisel ,weall came up with a lot of lists of amazing female directors, many of whom were booked out for the next year, which is amazing because they are working.

But there’s a big gap between young women who are graduating from film school, wanting to direct or write or produce, and the ones who are actually able to cross that bridge. What we really have to figure out is how can we lift up these new and emerging voices, and give them the experience they need to be able to keep working on all different kinds of stories in the industry.

“Midge has an innate sense of curiosity about the world”

● The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is available on Amazon Prime Video from today