By Iain Blair
When the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel premiered on Amazon Prime in 2017, the colorful period comedy introduced another strong, witty and occasionally oblivious heroine from the mind of Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), who also writes and directs. This time it was the confident-yet-conflicted aspiring comedienne Miriam “Midge” Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), who takes the late ‘50s comedy club stages by storm. The show, which has been renewed for a fourth season, became a favorite of critics and viewers.
Featuring a large ensemble cast — including Tony Shalhoub, Alex Borstein, Michael Zegen, Marin Hinkle and Kevin Pollak — the series has been an Emmy darling, and this year is no different, with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel picking up 20 nominations, including best comedy and best lead actress in a comedy series for Brosnahan.
In Season 3, which started streaming last December, Midge got her big break opening for singer Shy Baldwin on his national tour. Leaving her kids with her ex-husband, she sets out with her manager Susie to locales including Las Vegas and Miami Beach. Along their journey, Midge and Susie discovered that life on the road could be both glamorous and humbling.
I recently spoke with writers/directors/showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino — who have already begun mapping out Season 4 — about making the show, the Emmys and their love of post production.
There’s a great line in Midge’s stand-up routine: “Comedy is fueled by oppression, by a lack of power, by disappointment… Now who the hell does that describe more than women?” Do you believe that?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: (Laughs) Yes, and I believe it very deeply. I have it tattooed on my ass. It’s always been very surprising to me that it’s always been so hard for women to get in the door of comedy, since they get it more. They understand it.
Rachel Brosnahan is so good as Midge. What does she bring to the role, given that she’s not a comedian?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: First off, she’s just so great to work with. She’s very smart and poised, takes her work very seriously and puts a lot of work and thought into the character. We have a great relationship with her, and it’s so wonderful to work hand in hand with your leading actress.
And it’s easy to forget she’s just twenty-something until you make a John Hughes reference and she looks at you blank-faced — and then you realize you’re 100 and she’s so young really. And you’re right — she’s not a comedian, and I don’t think she’d even done comedy before we dragged her into this and threw her up on stage before hundreds of people. I think she relies on us to make sure she doesn’t come off looking like an idiot, and we promised we never would.
The show looks so great. Talk about what it takes.
Daniel Palladino: From the very start we discussed with our DP David Mullen exactly what we wanted the show to be and look like. We didn’t want it to feel like some sort of time capsule set in the past. It’s set in 1958, but we wanted it to feel very modern, as that world for the characters felt very modern and full of energy. And we wanted a lot of color.
Amy Sherman-Palladino: David knows all there is to know about movies, and he really understood our love of color and movement. We wanted the show to have this constant motion and energy, and to never be static. It’s hard to find people in that same groove since it’s easier to make things look pretty and light people like they’re in a Rembrandt if they’re sitting by a window, rather than if they’re walking around, inside, outside, in shadow, in sunlight and so on. And add in our production designer Bill Groom, our costume designer Donna Zakowska and all the other departments, and we have a great team.
What are the big challenges of showrunning, and do you like being showrunners?
Daniel Palladino: That’s a very interesting question. Yes, we do like it, but we’re at a point where we just ask Amazon to let us do our thing. Being able to write and direct this and guide it along is a lot of work, and a lot of responsibility. You have to get the script right, and work closely with all the actors and crew. It’s often fun, but it’s often a long journey. The buck stops with us, and if something doesn’t work it’s our fault.
Amy Sherman-Palladino: And neither of us have any transferable skills. If this didn’t work out, I don’t know what we’d be doing.
Where do you post?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: All in New York. We do all the editing in our offices at Steiner Studios.
Daniel Palladino: Then we do all the sound mixing at C5 Studios with our supervising sound editor and mixer Ron Bochar, and then we do the color timing at Light Iron in Soho. We love both places.
Do you like the post process?
Daniel Palladino: We love it, and we love being in the editing room, though there’s never enough time as TV has such a tight post schedule. Movies have nine months, we have three, four days per episode. What we do is pretty much film-quality, so it’s like making half a film each episode.
You have a big cast and a lot of stuff going on in each episode. What are the big editing challenges?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: Keeping up the pace… that kind of screwball comedy energy of the show, and we learned all that on Gilmore Girls with Lauren Graham who could speak dialogue faster than the speed of light. The cast comes from theater, and they rehearse a lot, which is a big help for us. A great thing about being able to write and direct episodes is that we cut in-camera, and we don’t shoot footage we’ll never use. We can sit there and go, “That’s the take we want. That’s the thing that works.” Or, “Use Rachel’s performance from this take, but Michael’s from that take.” So we do that on set, which streamlines post a bit. We know what we have once we get in the editing room, and we have a great team of editors, including Kate Sanford and Tim Streeto.
The show has a lot of VFX, like shots of old TV shows, and when the Eiffel Tower turns upside down on top of the Empire State Building. What’s did that entail?
Daniel Palladino: We have quite a big in-house VFX team led by our VFX supervisor Lesley Robson-Foster, and we do a lot of work to turn modern New York into 1960s New York. There’s all the VFX for cars and planes and trains, and we also farm out shots to various houses like Framestore, Phosphene and Alkemy X.
We’re not that involved with all the simple stuff, like cleanup; a lot of our VFX have to be shot in a very specific way so they can be executed well in post. That means Lesley is on the stage with us every day to help guide the process. For instance, in that last Episode 8 where there’s the plane and the tarmac and airport — none of that existed. We shot it on the parking lot at the studio, and Lesley added all that in post.
Can you talk about the importance of sound and music?
Daniel Palladino: They’re so important for us, and we’re very hands-on with that and all of post — probably more than most showrunners. We go to every sound mix, and we also supervise all the music ourselves, along with Robert Urdang. We’re music fanatics and really enjoy picking it all, and choosing music that’s just right for the scene. Sometimes the music’s in the script, or we pick it in the edit. Then we go to C5 at least twice — to hear the first mix and give notes, and then again for a final mix. There’s a lot of fine-tuning, of ambient sound, and maybe bringing up a line, that sort of thing.
Was the character of Midge inspired by the pioneering comedian Joan Rivers?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: Yes, but also by all the early women in comedy, from Lucy to Moms Mabley and Phyllis Diller, who were brilliant but who had to fight to get noticed.
I saw that Amazon launched a “Maisel Mondays” Emmy campaign to highlight the show’s third season.
Amy Sherman-Palladino: Isn’t it awesome! The Emmys mean a lot, although it’s a weird time to be thinking about awards. This show is so timely in terms of women, and there’s been a lot of talk about lack of opportunity for women in movies.
Are things better in TV?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: I think things have always been a little better in TV, a little more open, going back to I Love Lucy. And today I think all the really great, groundbreaking work is happening on TV.
What’s your advice to anyone who wants to get into showrunning?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: (Laughs) Do something else! We need teachers, doctors, mechanics, plumbers.
Daniel Palladino: When we started, showrunners were far more behind the scenes. It wasn’t such a job description as it is now. I’d say focus on writing and telling stories first.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
