‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Showrunners Talk Writing Premium Material – The Hollywood Reporter

If it weren’t for the global pandemic, the fourth season of Miraculous Mrs. Maisel could have come in a completely different form: As in previous seasons, Midge and Maisel’s close friends will be adventuring across the country, possibly infiltrating ever wider showbiz platforms. As always, the sky is the limit. But as COVID-19 became known, married co-creators/hosts Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino found themselves reconfiguring their plans to meet at this point. The resulting season — thanks in large part to the perennial way the story, characters, and actors lead them — earned 12 Emmy nominations.

The season that saw Midge’s successes and hardships propelled her distinguished comedy career forward. The supporting players – father Abe, manager Susie and ex-husband Joel – found their own lives mirroring Midge’s moment of transition after predictable paths were hampered by a decision to follow chasing her unusual ambitions. Couple of showrunners participated CHEAP to dig into the tough challenges of presenting a lavish mid-century period designated during a global pandemic and the unexpected rewards of the fourth season of the Amazon Prime comedy.

What’s front and center for the direction of the entire season? And what are the interesting changes of plan that have happened along the way?

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO The changes and swaps weren’t really exciting, because we were actually planning a completely different season, and then COVID killed us, so we had to quickly regroup and find how to do this program and not feel like, “Oh, it’s a COVID program. They were all in separate elevators, on cell phone talk boxes. “We were going to travel, and that forced us to regroup for the New York gig. The benefit of that turned out to be that we weren’t as divided as a family. It was really a lot of fun. many of them are in each other’s faces. Besides, you can just walk the streets of New York. We have to go to Carnegie Hall, for God’s sake, this would never have happened if we weren’t in. In the end, it was a wonderful thing because our people were forced to be together more. That caused a lot of good conflicts, stories, tears, laughter, anger. change your clothes, all your basics.

Is there something particularly satisfying about making this season that you just can’t get enough of because you had so much giddy fun doing it?

DAN PALLADINO The world of television is shrinking [how] everyone expects things to work out in three seasons now, and that’s one run – or even two seasons, and it’s a run. We’re really proud of the fact that we’ve made the show into its fourth season and still garner quite a few Emmy nominations. Our staff and crew, who have been with us almost as one since the pilot, are still really, really motivated. Lucky find, like the Ferris wheel: We didn’t write about the Coney Island Ferris wheel thing, we actually broke the whole story and we shrug a bit about the place Midge turned around and told us about. family what happened to Shy Baldwin. We just thought, “How can we really solidify this to make it incredibly fun and at the same time, extremely challenging?” And that’s the scene of the Coney Island Ferris wheel, and then everything in that story quickly comes together. That kind of happy accident is what really keeps us going and staying motivated.

SHERMAN-PALLADINO I would say it was a lost New York year for us where we really got to show more of this town that was really important to this show.

The music selection and the show’s needles are always rated as excellent. Tell me about your experience putting together the Emmy-nominated song, “Probably Monica.”

SHERMAN-PALLADINO Music has always meant a lot to us, and every year we dig deeper into it. Dan and I have always felt music is a character and we don’t use it unless it makes sense or says something to the plot. We’re not adults for, like, “Get a song and just throw it in the background,” because it doesn’t make any sense, because it doesn’t add energy or feel or vibe. Because we got lucky in this wonderful group, Tom [Mizer] and Curtis [Moore], who wrote the original songs for us, we knew that anytime we wanted to get to that well, whatever we wanted to do, we could do it. Get access to this beautiful theater – our production designer built the Wolford Theater for us. It was COVID and we couldn’t go to many places, so we built our own theater. You have to put some music into the theater, and you have to figure out what that vibe is and what that sound is. Glad to find the dropped needle. One of our favorite moments is when we sit down to edit, when we do the final reading, and for any song that we haven’t written into a script, we just sit there with , yes, iPod – sorry, folks; kids, ask your parents – and we just go through the music while we’re editing. It’s actually a really important part of the process. One of the most fun parts of this process was sitting there in that editing room, finding those songs.

Is there anything about what you achieved in season four that encouraged you for what lies ahead?

SHERMAN-PALLADINO We’re deep into season five right now. We’ve brought our A-game into season five. We have a cast that we know is a gift you don’t get much of and will probably never happen again in this configuration. Stories and scripts should celebrate those who are showing up and giving 100% every day. Dan and I bring nausea, deep stress, and mental turmoil into every season, because we don’t want to send to our table something that isn’t good enough for Rachel Brosnahan or good enough for Tony. [Shalhoub]Alex [Borstein]Marine [Hinkle] or Michael [Zegen]. I don’t know if it’s ambition or just neurosis or lack of treatment time, but it’s the kind of thing we automatically bring in every season. We feel really good about how [season four] turned out. It felt tough in the moment, but looking back, it did everything we wanted it to do and then some.

The edited interview is long and clear.