lungs but be deeply devoted to each other. But I was impressed that Amy and Dan had such Mensa-level attention to detail in that everything was already there on the page. MARIN HINKLE : It was a huge surprise to me that Rose’s family came from Oklahoma. So, I studied all the people who were brought up like Rose, which was such a delight as an actor. She had some fragility and neuroses, but I liked that she was the backbone of the family and had a firm sense of her own opinion. DHANA RIVERA GILBERT : I loved all those big family scenes, whether it’s Yom Kippur dinner or the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. The ensemble really worked together seamlessly. KEVIN POLLAK : The Ferris wheel scene was remarkable. I’m a West Coast Jew who had never been to Coney Island. But they loaded us all into this 100-year-old contraption! Then they recreated it on a soundstage, and our characters all yelled at each other sixty feet up in the air in their separate cars. It was a three-ring circus to pull it o ff . TONY SHALHOUB : We were screaming the lines. People behind the scenes had to walk away because they were laughing so hard. CAROLINE AARON : You know, there’s a di ff erence between clichés and archetypes. I do not think in any way our characters were clichés. I did a lot of reading about that period. My husband’s grandfather was one of those peddlers of pots and pans downtown who ended up with a house and a middle-class life in a short amount of time. Shirley and Moishe were very close to that. AMY SHERMAN ! PALLADINO : You also have to remember that in the 1950s, comedy was just starting to change a little bit from “Take my wife … please!” to more political humor, more social humor, more talking about religion and men and women and their roles in the world. It’s an interesting time and place. RACHEL BROSNAHAN : One of the original descriptors was that Midge was one of the first female stand-ups. So, when I started researching the role, I found YouTube clips of this lesser-known comedian named Jean Carroll. She was absolutely
brilliant, and I became convinced that she was the person who inspired the show. I went down a real rabbit hole and studied a lot of her gestures and cadence. She was a fast talker, too. TONY SHALHOUB : I loved that there was a cultural shift for women and families during that period from the 1950s into the ’60s. And here’s this woman swimming upstream. That really appealed to me. KEVIN POLLAK : It was a great thrill for me that Moishe was Midge’s biggest critic. He just didn’t get what she was trying to do and says it to her face at the family dinner! I’ve directed a documentary about comedy, and every funny person’s trajectory starts with someone telling them that they couldn’t do it. ALEX BORSTEIN : I was never a road stand-up comic like Midge. I’d work on material and go in spurts. And even back then, women would be used as a spice — promoters would just sprinkle us around the guys on any given night at a club. KEVIN POLLAK : Most of Midge’s monologues are testimonial, which is a style that’s become very, very popular over the past ten years. Certainly, here in America. But back in the 1950s, this didn’t exist. Lenny Bruce didn’t even start out that way — he was a very clean-cut comic at first. Then he became edgier by talking about things in life that were troubling and tackled very stressful aspects of humanity. He was raging against the machine. ALEX BORSTEIN : Midge was like a female Lenny Bruce in the sense that she’s stream-of-consciousness and talking about her day-to-day. She’s also a divorced woman raising kids. She’s extremely forward-thinking in her actions and her words. LUKE KIRBY : In my early research, my first resource was Lenny’s [1965] book, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People . He talked about being out at sea during World War II and seeing the stu ff that belonged to dead soldiers floating by him. It hit him pretty hard. So, I wanted to explore that feeling a bit. He was so happy to be in this world of comedy and be with people, but there’s love and pain. He’s the person who said, “Damn the people that would keep lovers apart.”
SEASON 2
The Culture DHANA RIVERA GILBERT : Maisel introduced us to the zeitgeist of Jewish families in 1950s New York. The humor and the irreverence are entryways to appreciating how deeply connected we are to our own families even as we set out to define our own paths free from the expectations of our traditional roles. We loved and laughed a little more deeply after each episode.
TONY SHALHOUB : I have all these fond memories of my father and grandfather and uncles and the clothes and the cars during that time. I saw a lot of my father in Abe. And I’m a father of two daughters around Midge’s age. KEVIN POLLAK : You’ve got Abe Weissman, who’s buttoned down and studied and trying to maintain his faith. Moishe was much more scrappy and self- made. Based on my own experience, I already had a feel for Jewish fathers and grandfathers in the 1950s and ’60s. They’d yell at each other at the top of their
ALEX BORSTEIN : It was a time when people
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