60 TIME December 11, 2017
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did not write, and during the interview
Palladino jokes that he has to check his
wife’s pulse when she lets him answer a
question without interjecting.
Still,Mrs. Maisel represents a
development in Sherman-Palladino’s
writing. While Lorelai butted heads
with her oppressive, buttoned-up
parents, Midge is delighted to play
the part of dutiful daughter and wife.
“What I didn’t want to do—because it
had been done so often before—is write
a woman living in the ’50s gazing out
the window wondering if there’s more
to life,” says Sherman-Palladino. “Midge
actually loves her life.” Midge has no
reservations about waking up in the wee
hours to apply makeup and sneak back
into bed before her husband gets up, or
bribing a Greenwich Village comedy-
club owner with brisket in exchange
for stage time for her husband, a
businessman with stand-up aspirations.
Until she does. In the first of eight
hour-long episodes, Midge finds out
that her husband is cheating on her
and—worse, in her eyes—stealing
his material from other comics. The
betrayal sends her on a drunken rant
onstage, where she proves that she’s
the one in the Maisel family with
comedic chops. But instead of having
Midge disavow her domestic life and
become a feminist disrupter of the
‘She’s not your
grandmother’s character.
This isn’t a precious little
period piece.’
AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO, creator
ofMrs. Maisel, on the modern appeal
of a 1950s female comediancomedy scene,Mrs. Maisel explores a
more sophisticated tension. Midge has
thrived in her confined life and is wary
of stepping beyond the cultural bounds.
“There’s the Midge that wants
to look beautiful and revels in her
femininity, and then there’s the Midge
who wants to get onstage and say
whatever she wants,” says Sherman-
Palladino. “She feels pulled to those
two different lives, and that’s something
we can play with for however long
this show runs.” That will likely be a
long time. Before the first season even
premiered, Amazon ordered a second.THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISELhews
much closer to Sherman-Palladino’s real
life thanGilmore Girls ever did. While the
battles between Lorelai and her Waspy
parents provided much of the tension in
that series, Sherman-Palladino was able
to draw from conflicts in her own Jewish
family to create the banter between
Midge and her parents, played by TonyShalhoub and Marin Hinkle. “At times,
we wroteGilmore Girls incredibly Jewish.
We just had a bunch of goyim saying
the words,” she says. “But their conflict
was often suppressed and simmering.
At least in my experience, with Jewish
families, it’s more of an outward battle.”
And the concept for the show was
born straight from Sherman-Palladino’s
childhood: her father was a stand-up,
and as a teenager she sold cigarettes at
the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. “It
doesn’t take too much therapy to figure
out where this idea came from,” she says.
But dropping Midge in theMad Men
era wasn’t just an homage to Sherman-
Palladino’s father. In 1958, comedians
began to transition to the observational
humor that is still in vogue today. That
presented new opportunities for women.
“History is generally told by men about
men,” says Rachel Brosnahan, who plays
Midge. “To have a period piece being
told by a woman about an extraordinary
woman is exciting.”
The Palladinos, who leftGilmore
Girls before the last season of the show’s
original run over disputes with the
WB (now known as the CW), have hit
their stride on streaming services. Last
year, they produced four new episodes
for a Netflix miniseries,Gilmore Girls:
A Year in the Life. Both Netflix and
Amazon, they say, have given them more
freedom—and financial backing—to
execute their vision than networks ever
did. Given their druthers, the duo prefer
to focus less on romantic cliffhangers
and more on relationships between
women. “With Amy, you know you’re
not going to be playing a sitcom mom
or a wet-blanket wife or a put-upon
girlfriend,” says longtime Palladino
collaborator Alex Borstein of her role as
Midge’s manager and unlikely friend.
“This reminds me of Rhoda and Mary
fromThe Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Despite its anachronistic setting,
there’s something timely about
Mrs. Maisel. While Midge’s full-bodied
skirts may belong to the last century,
her stand-up is of the Amy Schumer
era and her gumption is in line with the
protesters at the Women’s March. “We
wanted Midge to have a very modern
appeal,” says Sherman-Palladino. “She’s
not your grandmother’s character. This
isn’t a precious little period piece.” □Fans ofGilmore Girls will find that Mrs. Maisel shares the same sense of humorMRS. MAISEL: NICOLE RIVELLI—AMAZON STUDIOS; HARINGTON: GREGG DEGUIRE—WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; GODLESS: URSULA COYOTE—NETFLIX