Continual challenges are key to success of ‘Mrs. Maisel’
NEW YORK — The creator of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel“likes to send cryptic texts to her actors while the show is on hiatus. They’re often clues about what everyone can expect they’ll be doing.
Before Season 2, Amy Sherman-Palladino asked Rachel Brosnahan, “Can you ride a bike and play pingpong?” Actress Marin Hinkle was asked if she could speak French and Michael Zegen got an unusual inquiry:“Can you throw a baseball in the air with a cigarette in your mouth and a beer bottle in the other hand?”
Sure enough, come filming, Brosnahan was playing table tennis, Hinkle was speaking French and Zegen was in a field hitting baseballs while smoking and downing a beer. So Brosnahan knew she was going to be challenged when she got a new text before Season 3 started filming.
The Amazon hit show, which stars Brosnahan as 1950s housewife-turnedcomedian Midge Maisel, had ended last season with her about to go on a European tour. Her star was on the rise but the text from Sherman-Palladio still took the actress’ breath away: “Your first audience is going to be 850 people. I hope you’re cool with that.”
Brosnahan wasn’t exactly totally cool with that at first, but rallied. Season 3, now streaming, opens with her doing her act in front of hundreds of uniformed U.S. Army soldiers. “I just want you to know how much I admire you guys. I could never be brave enough to wear the same outfit every day,” she tells them.
Brosnahan said she and her fellow actors are glad they get the chance to do such interesting things onscreen.
“We all share this feeling that we’re being constantly stretched and pushed as performers in ways we never could have anticipated,” she said. “I never, in a million years, could have imagined this would be what I would be doing, let alone be the thing that I’m most well known for: playing a stand-up comedian in the 1950s. It continues to be so surprising.”
Fans who tune into Season 3 will find Midge fully diving into her comedy career, having come to the conclusion that she cannot juggle a romantic relationship, motherhood and work all at the same time. She’s on a European tour, opening for a superstar singer.
“She’s found a renewed sense of self. I think she feels grounded in this journey, whereas in a lot of Season 2 she was a little wishy-washy. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to dive all the way in. She kind of had one foot out the door,” Brosnahan said.
Taking care of her kids back home is her estranged husband, Joel, played by Zegen. It was Joel’s infidelity that indirectly triggered Midge’s comedy career and the show’s writers have evolved his character from a heel to a multidimensional man.
“He is a good parent, especially this season. He’s really trying. And I think that is the key: He is trying. He’s trying to make up for his wrongdoings,” Zegen said. “He’s coming around to the fact that she’s doing well and she’s successful and he needs to be supportive.”
Although Season 2 ended with Midge and Joel romantically linked, Brosnahan said viewers shouldn’t expect prolonged sparks. She has pestered Sherman-Palladino about what eventually happens to the couple and was told: “While they were once on the same page, they’ll never be on the same page at the same time again. They may come very, very close but they’ll never quite align like they used to.”
One thing that hasn’t changed: Brosnahan isn’t yet fully comfortable as a stand-up comedian. In the first season, she could tell herself she was just having a prolonged mental breakdown onstage. But now her comedy sets are more complicated.
“As the seasons go on, and Midge starts playing for bigger and bigger audiences and totally different houses and different states and different countries, she has to become a more technically proficient comedian. And so do I,” she said. “That continues to be absolutely horrifying.”