Susie ‘Is Like a Bull and Not Afraid’

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel star and Emmy nominee Alex Borstein talks about the ‘tiny parallel universes’ of her life and career, including MadTV and Family Guy, that led her to where she is now

Alex Borstein is an actress and writer — primarily of the comedy variety — who has excelled in an unusually wide variety of formats, from sketch comedy (she made her name on Fox’s MadTV from 1997 through 2002) to voice acting (most notably as the voice of Lois Griffin, among others, on Fox’s Family Guy from 1999 through the present) to films (ranging from 2004’s Catwoman to 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck) to series TV (most recently Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs.

Maisel, on which she plays Susie Myerson, a bartender turned talent manager).

The 51-year-old Golden Globe nominee, two-time SAG Award nominee, two-time Critics Choice Award winner and three-time Emmy Award winner (twice for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and once for Family Guy), who is Emmy-nominated this year for best supporting actress in a comedy series for Maisel, recently reflected on her life and career on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast.

Where were you born and raised? And what did your folks do for a living?

I was born in Highland Park, Illinois, which is a suburb, northern suburb. My father is a psychologist, a Ph.D., and my mother has had many professions. At the time of my birth, she was a mother — I’m the youngest of three children.

People often get into comedy because they are trying to bring some levity to difficult situations at home, and I understand that this may have been the case for you?

I think it was twofold. Being the youngest, naturally you have to fight for attention. Also, my older brother, the middle child, Evan, is a hemophiliac. My mother is what we called back then a low-level carrier, as am I. But my brother had hemophilia growing up that expressed with a lot of injuries, a lot of hospital time and a lot of tension. And I think, yeah, I began trying to break that tension all the time with comedy. But the whole family is pretty funny.

Your family moved to Los Angeles when you were a kid. How, at 16, were you already doing stand-up in the area?

I think I realized that being onstage is the one place where I wasn’t going to get in trouble for mouthing off, and the quickest way to get onstage is a solo act, which is stand-up — not having to wait for a summer program, the school play or an audition. I did a tiny bit of quote-unquote standup at school once; they had, like, a talent show and I tried it there and it worked. So then I went to this place that was in Chatsworth, California, called Gallagher’s, literally on the ground floor of a Ramada Inn. It was just a bar, and they had an open mic night and I talked the owner into letting me perform. My parents had to come because it was 21 and over. The audience was predominantly my family and some bar patrons, but they paid me $20.

You eventually moved around from stand-up and toward sketch comedy. How did that happen?

I went to San Francisco State University and I started doing some stand-up in the student commons and the depot they had there. And I submitted to a comedy contest they had. Here’s a fun fact: Margaret Cho lied, pretended she was a student to get in the competition and won; I remember meeting her and thinking she was great. But I did some stand-up there and a guy named Jeffrey Anderson, who is now a movie critic, came up to me after one of the stand-up shows and said, “Hey, I’m trying to start a sketch comedy group here, would you be interested?” I had never done sketch, but I said, “Yes, I would love it.” And we started this group. We did some very interesting things that got a lot of attention. I realized I loved it. I loved doing comedy with other people. It was so nice. It wasn’t as lonely. You’re not waiting around stand-up clubs. So after I graduated, I moved back down to Los Angeles and started in a master’s program. And at the same time, my brother and I enrolled at a place called ACME Comedy Theatre, which gave classes in improv, but then once you auditioned for the company, it was written sketch. I got in on the first try, my brother got in on the second try, and then we started doing sketch comedy every weekend. I did that for a few years, and it was some of the best times of my life.

ACME eventually led you to something that was a big part of my childhood, MadTV. I always describe it as SNL for younger people, a half-hour earlier on Saturday nights, with about half the budget per show and not entirely live.

Actually, the very first professional gig I had, before MadTV,

was doing voiceover for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,

which I got by doing a play at the Jewish Community Center. I auditioned for Working by Studs Terkel, and one of the guys who was in it happened to run the loop group [i.e., background voice actors] for that show, so that was the very first actual paid gig that I had — and my first time doing voiceover. Then MadTV happened. I would go to comedy festivals even if I wasn’t invited. At the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, I met a woman who was talking about Austin, Texas, and how they were starting an improv and sketch comedy festival there. I got four other people together from ACME Comedy Theatre and we submitted ourselves, got in and went. It was all pay-to-play at this point, and it was some of the best times I’ve ever had. We did like four shows there, and the casting people from MadTV saw us and we all five got auditions. It’s funny because the casting office is about a half-mile from where ACME Comedy Theatre is in L.A., but they’d never seen us there. It took us being in Austin, Texas. Anyway, I think that my physical type was something they didn’t have — they already had their cute blonde and they had this and that — and they were

like, “Hmm, look at this doughy little brunette.” I got really lucky and I got in.

You were there on MadTV for five seasons, from 1997 through 2002, and played everyone from Chelsea Clinton to Rosie O’Donnell to the fictional Ms. Swan. You became a star on that show. But my understanding is that throughout the run, you couldn’t get representation?

No, I had no agent. I could not get an agent to save my life.

And Family Guy, on which you’re still voicing characters, started for you during MadTV’s run?

Yeah. One of the showrunners on MadTV was a guy named Adam Small. Adam was married to Leslie Kolins Small, who worked for Fox Network. She had developed Family Guy and brought it in. She really had her finger on the pulse and found this kid out of Rhode Island School of Design named Seth MacFarlane, who had this animation piece he had done as a thesis project. She knew it was magic and she originally tried to get it on MadTV, actually

— it was going to be interstitials like Tracey Ullman did for The Simpsons — but Seth was, thank God, so smart and was like, “I think I should own this and not do that.” Anyway, she came up to me at an event and said, “Hey, do you do voiceovers?” And I was like, “Sure, I’ll do anything.” And she asked if I would help out with this pilot. So I met Seth at this recording studio and they brought me drawings of Lois Griffin. And at the time I was still doing ACME Comedy Theatre, even while I was on MadTV, and one of the sketches I was doing there was called “Magic Man,” written by Jeff Lewis, about a nice Jewish boy — a stockbroker — who comes home and tells his parents he is no longer going to be a stockbroker because he wants to be a magician. And I played his mother, wearing a red wig, a little apron and glasses, and I would say, “OK, so you want to become a magician but you’re still going to be a stockbroker, right?” “No, Mom, I’m leaving.” “OK, but you’re still going to be a stockbroker, right?” It was the very Jewish experience of letting your parents down. And so I said to Seth, I’m like, “What about this voice?” And he was like, “That’s cool, but can you speed it up? It’s too slow.” That voice is actually also a rip-off of one of my Hungarian relatives, a cousin of mine in Long Island who shall remain nameless. But yeah, that’s

how it was born, and then the pilot got picked up and then they told me Fox wasn’t sure that they wanted to keep me. So they made me audition again, and they auditioned everybody on the planet and then I eked by. Seth fought very hard to get me the role.

One of the amazing things about your story is how one little thing could have changed everything. If you hadn’t bet on yourself to go to that Austin festival, there’s no MadTV. If you hadn’t been doing MadTV, there’s no Family Guy. And then if you hadn’t been doing Family Guy, there’s no relationship with the Palladinos, Dan Palladino and Amy Sherman-Palladino, right?

Yeah. I really do see my career as this exercise in quantum physics. It’s like there are these tiny parallel universes that all could have happened if that chain had been broken. At Family Guy, one of the writers was a gentleman named Daniel Palladino, and he then rose in the ranks. He eventually ran the writers room and was one of the showrunners — he was my boss. He came to me one day and said, “Hey, you should read my wife’s pilot.” And I was like, “Why?” “You should read it. Here.” And it was called Gilmore Girls. I read it and was like, “Wow, this is really cool. This is a whole universe.” And he’s like, “You should audition for Sookie [the part Melissa McCarthy eventually played].” And I was like, “What?!” I said, “But I’m still working at MadTV. We don’t know if we’ve been picked up again.” He’s like, “You can do that first position. Audition for this second.” I did, and for a while it looked like they were going to let me do both, but at the time The WB and Fox were in a huge pissing contest and at the last minute Fox said, “No, you can’t do this.” It was heartbreaking.

You ended up making a few guest appearances on Gilmore Girls, and then on the Palladinos’ show Bunheads. You began appearing

God, yes. The hospital scene. I didn’t know that you could raise your hand and say, “I have to step off, I need to use the restroom,” so I sat in this hospital bed in this very, very hot, hot set — and it was an office that they converted to look like a hospital room — and I sat there and I sat there and I sat there, and I didn’t know that they had people that would stand in for me. I didn’t know they had a “second team,” it’s called, so that when they’re lighting and setting up the shop, you can go and use the toilet. I didn’t know. And finally, I was like, “I got to go. I got to go.” And Halle was like, “Go, honey, you don’t have to …” So I stepped out and went to the bathroom and when I came back, everybody was looking at me very strangely. The assistant director pulled me aside and said, “Listen, if you have to use the restroom, you need to tell us, we can’t have peeing in the bed.” I was like, “What?!” “Your stand-in had to crawl in.” And I was like, “It was sweat! It was sweat!” But they literally thought that I was incontinent or something. Everyone was tiptoeing, afraid to tell me they thought I had pissed the bed, and it was sweat. And that poor stand-in.

Then you were great on an HBO show that didn’t last as long as it deserved to, Getting On. But that sort of led you back to the Palladinos and to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, no?

Yeah. It was soul-crushing when Getting On was canceled. I was done. I was going to move to Barcelona and do Family Guy [voiceovers can be recorded anywhere] and that’s it. Before I left, Amy said, “Are you really moving to Barcelona?” I was like, “Yeah, I’m really doing it.” She said, “I have written this thing, will you just read it?” I was like, “Fine, I’ll read it.” And, of course, it was fucking great. So I flew to New York, auditioned, got it and thought, “Oh crap. Well, no big deal, I’m only going to be in Barcelona for one year, it’ll be fine.” So I came back to the U.S. shortly after moving there, shot the pilot, and then the rest is history. When I read with Rachel [Brosnahan], I knew she was special and our chemistry was special.

You’ve referenced The Lady and the Tramp in talking about your characters’ relationship, not just in terms of the visuals of the characters, but also the fact that there’s a bit of a platonic love story. But Susie actually reminds me of another tramp, if you will, Charlie Chaplin’s — her clothing, her walk, the sense that she’s not particularly comfortable in her own skin, the fact that she’s sort of in her own world …

That’s interesting. Yeah. She’s not comfortable in her own skin, which is why she puts on an outer skin — the leather jacket is like this armor that she requires, and a hat, keeping her head down and feeling protected. And yet she is like a bull and not afraid. Sometimes she should be more afraid. The love story at the heart of this show is not, in my opinion, Lenny Bruce and Midge or Joel and Midge, or any guy; it’s Susie and Midge. It’s a very deep, interesting relationship, which is why I love working with Rachel doing it.

“The love story at the heart of this show is not, in my opinion, Lenny Bruce and Midge or Joel and Midge; it’s Susie and Midge,” Borstein (left) says of her and Rachel Brosnahan’s characters.