In its final season, the pioneering Amazon hit wanted to go out the way it came in: fabulously, in heels and with a dizzying words-to-minutes ratio.Rachel Brosnahan during filming for the final season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” As the hit Amazon comedy wraps up, her character finally makes good.Heather Sten for The New York TimesOn a morning in mid-October, on the set of the Amazon comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” set dressers readied the grimy Midtown office of Susie Myerson, the talent manager played with a newsboy cap and signature glare by Alex Borstein. An animal wrangler oversaw a flock of pigeons outside a false window as a scenic artist painted on their droppings. In a haze of herbal cigarette smoke, the actors — Borstein, Alfie Fuller and Rachel Brosnahan — ran the scene again, again, again, until the pauses vanished and the dialogue sang.If you have seen “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the first streaming show to win an Emmy for best comedy series (one of 20 Emmys overall), you will suspect, correctly, that the lighting was gorgeous, the costumes sumptuous, the hair and makeup luxuriant. Each pigeon gleamed. (The fake excreta looked very nice, too.) A show that has never met a situation it couldn’t prettify and frill, that’s “Mrs. Maisel.”In this scene, Midge, Brosnahan’s exuberant comedian, receives news of a long-awaited break.“Are you serious?” Midge asks once Susie fills her in.“I’m ‘Antigone’ without the laughs,” Susie replies.As always, the final season features remarkably detailed production design. “We leaned into the vibrancy of the time,” said Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show’s creator.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesSo yes, in its final season, which premieres on Friday and is set in 1961, Midge Maisel, the only Upper West Side doyenne to work blue, finally makes good. (Just when, where and how? You’ll have to ask a pigeon.) Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created the show, and her husband, Dan Palladino, an executive producer, always imagined that it would end this way — brisk and bouncy and dressed to thrill.“Everyone knew Midge was going to be famous,” Palladino said. “This would have been a very disappointing journey for people to take if she just decides to be a housewife.”“A very funny, fabulous housewife,” his wife amended. “But that wasn’t the ride.”The ride, instead, was an ascending swirl of jewel tones and kick pleats and a chirpy soundtrack (three of those Emmys were for outstanding music supervision), a midcentury fever dream in candy coating. Underneath that coating was the story of a woman — actually two women, including Susie — triumphing in a male-dominated industry through moxie and native skill.The pilot for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was shot in 2016, not so long ago as the calendar goes but a lifetime in terms of streaming content. Even while making it, Sherman-Palladino and Palladino (“Gilmore Girls,” “Bunheads”) thought they might have a hit.“It was a show that was kind of popping off of our monitors while we were shooting it,” Palladino said. But a couple of decades in the business had taught him that all the popping in the world couldn’t guarantee that executives would OK it or that an audience would find it.The series tracked two women triumphing in a male-dominated industry: Midge and her manager, Susie Myerson, played by Alex Borstein. “It was exciting to see a three-dimensional female character and not just an empty sidekick,” she said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesBrosnahan, then 26 and best known for a multiepisode arc as a doomed call girl in “House of Cards,” also had doubts. After years spent, as she put it in a recent interview, “crying and dying,” she could hardly believe that the creators had trusted her to play a standup comic.“It felt daunting and impossible, petrifying and exhilarating,” she said. But she worried that a pilot about a woman who knew her way around a sweetheart neckline and a casserole dish would be perceived as too niche.“I remember finishing it and going, ‘But who’s going to watch it?’” she said.People did watch the pilot, though because Amazon keeps its viewing numbers secret, the creators have never known how many. Enough, anyway, for Amazon to give the show a two-season order, its first ever multiseason commitment. Its Prime Video service has gone through several paradigm shifts since, but year after year (and Emmy after Emmy), the company kept faith with “Mrs. Maisel.”“You would expect, at some point, someone to go, ‘Do they really need that many skirts?’” Sherman-Palladino said. “It never happened.”Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesThe creators said they had been given whatever they needed to create the world of the series. “We felt a very strong sense of pride about this project that we never experienced before,” said Dan Palladino, an executive producer. Heather Sten for The New York TimesBut all skirts have to come to an end sometime. Palladino described the decision to conclude the show with its fifth season as a mutual one.“It became a mutual decision once we were told it was the last season,” his wife clarified. In these last episodes, while tying off any dangling plot strands, they wanted to give viewers a sense not only of how Midge finally breaks into the big time but also what that break ultimately means for the show’s main characters. The nine-episode final season is larded with flash-forwards, designed to show what becomes of Midge and her extended family.These time jumps lend the show a gravitas it has not always offered. “Life is a series of choices, and some of them are stupid choices and some great choices,” Sherman-Palladino explained. “Part of what those flash-forwards did for us is show the consequences of the choices that she did make.”Until now, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has largely presented Midge’s arc as a dauntless upward climb. When her marriage shattered like so much dropped Fiestaware, she pulled herself onto a nightclub stage and she has stayed onstage ever since.Midge’s marriage ended early in the series but her former husband, Joel, played by Michael Zegen (left, with Joel Johnstone) remained a key character.Heather Sten for The New York Times“I have found her resilience inspiring and her courage to keep confronting change inspiring,” Brosnahan said. But did that resilience and that courage come at some cost? This final season, however breezy, confirms that it did.Earlier seasons have glossed over Midge’s neglect of her children. This final one strips some of that gloss away, even as it emphasizes the robust support system — an engaged father, a hypercompetent housekeeper, two sets of devoted grandparents — that the youngest Maisels enjoy.And yet, according to the creators, Midge’s success or failure as a mother wasn’t especially important. “I wasn’t setting out to do a story about a mother,” Sherman-Palladino said. “This was a story about a woman discovering her own ambition in a time when women were not supposed to have ambition.”Brosnahan echoed this. “I don’t know that it matters what kind of mom she is,” she said, noting that the go-getting men of prestige television have not been subject to the same critique. “We just didn’t have this conversation at this volume about Don Draper or even Walter White.”The show allowed many people beyond Midge to fulfill their personal ambitions. Borstein, who won two Emmys for the show, had nearly quit the business when she received the script for the pilot. She admired Susie’s toughness and also her vulnerability.Luke Kirby during filming. The final episodes will reveal both how Midge breaks into the big time and what that break ultimately means for the show’s main characters.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York Times“It was exciting to see a three-dimensional female character and not just an empty sidekick,” she said. And she saw parallels between her own career and those of Susie and Midge.“It rang really true for me,” she said. “I’ve always had to machete my own path.”Palladino and Sherman-Palladino never had to resort to machetes. But they did describe “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as the first project on which they had been given every resource that they needed, the chance to realize nearly every dream.“We felt a very strong sense of pride about this project that we never experienced before,” Palladino said. They are particularly delighted with the show’s exhaustive, spirited production design.“We leaned into the vibrancy of the time,” Sherman-Palladino said. “The cars were beautiful. The [expletive] toasters were gorgeous. People really did dress like that.”To walk through the production studio, even during the final weeks of the shoot, was to feel immersed in this fictional world. A bar set included custom-printed matchbooks on the hostess stand. There were coordinated dishes on kitchen shelves, signed photos and engraved awards in the offices of a late-night talk show.Reid Scott, who plays the host of that show, marveled at the level of detail. A new addition to “Mrs. Maisel,” he noticed during his first day on set that every piece of paper in every typewriter had custom letterhead.“The camera is never going to focus on what this person in the secretary pool is typing, yet they went all the way,” he said in a phone interview. “It infuses the entire production, and it makes everyone really step up.”Even stars of the show were surprised by the level of detail. “It infuses the entire production, and it makes everyone really step up,” Reid Scott said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesSaying goodbye to all of that letterhead wasn’t easy. The creators arranged for the final week to require the entire cast. Borstein said that there was a bet going to see who would cry first. (She lost.) There were tears in rehearsal, tears walking to rehearsal, tears at the coffee station.“Grown men crying all over the place,” Sherman-Palladino said. Brosnahan said that even on days when members of the main cast weren’t required, they would show up anyway, just to be together.The final day was especially wrenching. “We didn’t want to wrap,” said Tony Shalhoub, who won his own Emmy for playing Midge’s father, Abe Weissman. “We didn’t want to finish that last shot.”There were wrap gifts, too many. (“Because I believe in buying love,” Sherman-Palladino said.) And wrap parties. But it still hurt, though sometimes in a bittersweet way.“The end of the show, it leaves a hole in my heart,” Borstein said. “It’s difficult, but it’s also a wonderful empty space. Because I know what once filled it, and I know what I’m capable of.”Sherman-Palladino and Palladino feel that same poignancy, even as they’re working on a new show. (They might have talked more about it, but an Amazon publicist came on the line to politely dissuade them.) Mostly they feel grateful — for the cast, the crew, the skirts, the sense of shared endeavor.“Many people have lovely careers and never get to experience this kind of unity,” Sherman-Palladino said. “We’re very lucky. If we get hit by a bus right now, we’re fine.”She kidded that this was how “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” actually closes — with style, with flair and in multiple vehicular homicides.“Giant buses come out and run over everybody,” she cracked. “It’s just a blood bath.”“It’s the ending we dreamed of,” Palladino said.In the end, “this was a story about a woman discovering her own ambition in a time when women were not supposed to have ambition,” Sherman-Palladino said.Heather Sten for The New York Times More
