After the marvellous Mrs. Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) was dropped from the world tour by singer Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain) at the end of Season 3, she is back in Season 4 ready to avenge her humiliation. The Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning period drama details Midge’s adventures as she discovers her talent for stand-up.
While The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is pretty much all-around amazing, the music deserves an extra special mention. “Music is a personal thing to us,” says creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, speaking from Brooklyn, New York. “We have always been heavily involved musically in all of our shows. Gilmore Girls was music heavy. When we put music in a show, it has to mean something, it has to have character. I was lucky because I married a psychotic music-file. My husband, (Daniel Palladino, Executive Producer), has the serial killer equivalent of a music basement, which has thousands and thousands of albums and CDs.”
Right note
Daniel Palladino | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The collection is a treasure trove of music, says Sherman-Palladino. “One of our greatest joys is sitting in the editing room, scrolling through the iPod, looking for music for different moments and different pieces. Sometimes we will have a piece of music in mind and script a scene around it. That happened with the pilot. All of the music was in the script. It gave us an evolutional journey to what Midge was going through.”
Praising the music department and music supervisor Robin Urdang, Sherman-Palladino says, “We record so much music. We have a special team to arrange the music. They bring in orchestras like a Broadway show. Music is a big part of Midge’s life. She is in the world of entertainment and nightclubs at a time when music and the radio were important, not so much television. People listened to the radio and music constantly. Even now, when I walk down the streets of New York, there is music coming out of windows and cars. We wanted to make sure that the show had the same sort of feel.”
Stills from The Marvelous Mrs Maisel | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
With Season Four set in 1960, would Bob Dylan make an appearance? “He shows up in mid-1961,” says Daniel Palladino with a laugh. “He is probably practising his guitar right now and singing a lot of Woody Guthrie songs. He is not quite in our world. Hopefully, we will figure out a way to get him in.”
Dress up
Midge’s costumes from the hats to the frocks and everything in between are in a word, spectacular. “The sets and costumes work together,” says Amy Sherman-Palladino. “There is a weird synergy between Donna (Zakowska) who does the costumes and Phil Groom who does our set design. Midge will show up in a dress that somehow does something with the background.”
Rachel herself feels like she is not Midge until she puts her dress on, says Sherman-Palladino. “She shows up in jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt and then she puts on a corset, high heels and hat and she just walks differently. The costumes have that energy, colour and fun. We wanted to do a show that had all of those elements to it. It was vibrant and eye-catching. Midge is a flamboyant, out there, look-at-me character and the costumes mirror that.”
Digital detox
The best thing about a period show according to Amy Sherman-Palladino is not having to deal with social media. “You do not have to deal with Snapchat or Instagram! You do not have people staring at their phones. People were not disappearing into rooms to talk to people. They talk to people on the street. They pick up a phone, call someone and have a conversation. That sort of interaction is invaluable for a writer.”
It is the challenge of modern shows to figure out how to show texting, says Sherman-Palladino. “It takes away from actual, interpersonal relationships. We wanted to do something where people had to sit down and talk to each other. It was part of the reason that we want to do something in an earlier era. We did not want to deal with the distancing of people through electronic boxes.”
Dial up
While setting a show in an earlier era did away with social media, there were some cons as well. “Well, it takes a long time to dial the phone,” says Palladino. “We played into that in the first season when one of the characters was trying to dial someone quickly before they came down and just couldn’t get through all the numbers. Even though Amy and I grew up in that technology, we had to do a lot of research.”
Language, Palladino said was one of the trickiest things. “Certain phrases that are so common today were not invented yet. We were constantly asking linguists and researchers about what people said back then.”
The road ahead
In season four, Midge’s journey in show business and the world of comedy is going to accelerate says Sherman-Palladino. “It is going to take another pretty big left turn after having been dumped on the aeroplane tarmac in the season finale. In a situation like this, you either feel like ‘I want to quit and not have anything to do with it or you charge ahead with a new sense of strength. Midge chooses the latter option. She is pretty angry and looking for revenge.”
Shooting during the pandemic proved memorable, says Amy Sherman-Palladino. “Everybody had to mask up, we had little beepers sending warning signals if you were too close to somebody else. It was all weird. Distancing is not what you do in this business, which is all about people creating something together.”
The cast could not wear masks, says Sherman-Palladino. “Rachel could not wear a mask even in rehearsal because it would mess up her wig. The whole season was about bonding together and making sure that Rachel did not get sick. Every day we would get together and say, ‘today she will not get sick.’ We wanted to make sure that our girl was safe.”
Amy Sherman-Palladino says there was no griping or moaning and complaining. “It was just a collective ‘We will be safe at work and take care of each other’. That was pretty great. I will be grateful to this whole group forever for that.”
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is streaming on Amazon Prime Video
Published - February 23, 2022 12:47 pm IST
