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The stars of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” can explain how they pull of the show’s pitch-perfect comedy and spectacularly ambitious staged sequences. But it’s such a challenging task, they can still barely believe it was possible.
Rachel Brosnahan and Tony Shalhoub, both Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award winners, have again been nominated individually and as part of the “Maisel” ensemble at the upcoming SAG ceremony—for good reason. Their work as 1950s housewife-turned-comedienne Midge Maisel and her disapproving father Abe Weissman continued to surprise and delight in Season 3, which expanded upon the world creator Amy Sherman-Palladino has built. Spouting impeccably crafted dialogue and surrounded by sumptuous production design, Brosnahan and Shalhoub raised the bar on the series and their performances.
The award-winning pair recently joined Backstage senior staff writer Casey Mink live at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to pull back the curtain on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and their hilarious characters. Asked how they’ve grown and been pushed as actors, Shalhoub says the show has required him to dig deeper depths and reach higher highs. “It’s sort of an interesting combination of being well taken care of and challenged to beyond what you think you can handle,” he says of the shooting process. “You see these long takes, the dialogue is rapid-fire, the cues, the comedic timing has to be like a Swiss watch, everything has to work.”
Brosnahan remembers telling Sherman-Palladino she was scared of dancing, only to find multiple choreographed dances planned for Season 3. “This show has been the most terrifying thing every single second of every single day—which is so satisfying as an actor. How often do we get to do that?”
If the work of an actor isn’t terrifying, it isn’t challenging. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” demands that its cast rises to meet the scope of its ambition, and talents like Brosnahan and Shalhoub meet that challenge and then some. To hear more from the award-winning stars, check out Backstage’s exclusive Q&A in full below.
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