The Watch - What You Should Be Watching Right Now (Ep. 206)

Episode Date: November 27, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald delve into a number of new and returning shows on TV this season, including ‘Godless, 'Search Party,’ and ‘Runaways’ (2:00). Later Andy sits down with Rachel Brosnahan of ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ (33:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Andy Greenwald. I have no official title at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, not here in the studio. It's your guy. Chris Ryan, welcome.

Welcome to the show. It's your guy. I can't get anything more special than that. I started to do a big wind-up. I'm not pushing out of the stretch here. I was going to do a full, full goose gossage on you. And then I was just like, why invite it? You know, I'm a little froggy, I've got a little bit of a cold.

I just, I didn't want to open the door. That's your bit. I'm homesick today, but I... It's your number one guy? It's my guy? Sure. Anything's better than that. Before we get into our television conversation,

I hope that many people spent the holiday reading through Megan Abbott's Queenpin, which is our Double Down Book Club selection, which is a great, great book, a great read. We are going to be talking about this. that with Megan in a couple weeks in the month of December. We will have a date, we'll announce a date soon once we pin it down on the schedule. But that's coming. Read the book. It's under two of the pages. And then Megan Abbotton and I get to geek out about Mine Hunter. Yes, you're excited about that because you personally converted her to Mine Hunter. I did. It was my evangelism.

Let's talk about today's show. And also thank you to post 7 a.m. from New York Flight, Zach Mack, for not giving me a sarcastic nod when I said, let's get into this show. Here's what we got for you today. We're going to be talking about television. Shouts to Sam S-Mell. That's what we do on the show. Because we are a couple days away from December, ostensibly the last month of the year, but there are a lot of shows out there right now. There are a lot of shows coming back, a lot of shows debuting, and we want to discuss some of them with you and see what's good, what's bad, what we recommend you spending your hard-earned time capital on. Later in today's show, I've got an interview with the stars of one of those shows, Rachel Brosnahan, who is the star of

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which debuts on Amazon on Wednesday. I love the show. I'm going to talk a little bit about it. You may know Rachel from House of Cards. You will know her after the show debuts because she makes the show. She's absolutely tremendous. I had a great time chatting with her. That's the back half of the show. But we are going to talk about, let's roll call this. We're going to talk about Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. We're going to talk a little bit about Smilf. We're going to talk about runaways on Hulu. We are going to talk about search party on TBS, and we're going to talk about Godless, which is the show we spoke in our last episode a week ago. We spoke to the creator, writer, director, Scott Frank, about that. Chris, you have spent this weekend watching Godless.

I feel like that's fair. That's pretty much how you spent your days. I watched a bunch of Godless. I watched the first episode, so that was not an inconsiderable amount of my time spent. It's kind of show. There's a lot of breaks. Breaking them and putting them back together again, really. Yeah. And he's like, I think Scott said something along the lines of, well, you got to do it. And that is sort of the guy. principle of this entire show, I think, is Westerns. It's not a very high-concept show. You know, I think the thoughts or when are we going to find out that this is,

and I'm sure maybe in the second half course, it is definitely a little bit slow TV. I mean, it's not exactly that changes the way you look at the world. It is an example really pushing what you can get out of a place like Netflix in that way. I have a flatty? I've got a flatty. You know that I do. Yeah.

So, I mean, the landscape photography that they've done, two of my favorite actor, TV shows or movies, show. I really, I haven't watched as many as you have, because I did not have 19 hours free to watch horses, but I plan to because I really enjoy the show and I really admire it. And I think one of the, I think you've really touched on one of the reasons why I like it, which is we need to take a breath here as TV and culture fans. We do not always need to reinvent the wheel.

And if we make that the bar to clear for everything, then we're going to be very, very disappointed. And that makes good, probably good, culture, Twitter, but not very good culture. There is a reason why we watch television, and the large part of it isn't innovation. It's comfort. And when you make a Western, I really appreciated what Scott told us. You make a Western, you got to have the horses.

You got to have the duel. I mean, otherwise, what else are you doing? And I think that there has been a mis... I think Godless has been a... And it's a minor case study, because this hasn't exactly been a trending topic. But it's been interesting to watch some of the coverage of Godless where people pick up on some of the smaller pieces of the puzzle. Not smaller because they're less important, but smaller because they literally are smaller pieces of the story he's telling, such as the townful of widows, the sort of sneaky feminism that runs through the piece. That is not, what he was doing is making a Western.

He was not necessarily setting out to make a paradigm overturning feminist statement. Now, there are plenty of great patriarchy overturning feminist statements to be made, and I applaud people who do. But I think we just need to look at this for what it is, and it is a good Western with some interesting subplots to it. And I think that's okay. The take is that there is no take. That's when he shot it out. Eastwood, he shut the pot. Then it does with say the mechanics.

The scenes don't have the same account to me. You've got to keep it. I'm not trying to character. Then you would normally, if it was just like, hey, we got to get in, we got to get out, and then we have to have the next. shoot him up. I think one of the reasons why we like Scott Frank's work so much, and not just because I think, as we discussed last week, his taste aligns with ours in a lot of ways in terms of his reading material and his influences. But he's not afraid of giving people popcorn, you know, and I think that's one of the reasons, sneaky reasons why he and Steven Soderberg,

who's an executive producer of Godless get along so well, is that Soderberg is doing very innovative things with his casting, with his camera work, et cetera, et cetera. But he understands that when you're making Ocean's 11, getting the gang together montages, that's what you're there for, man, it's a heist movie. He understands that an out-of-sight, which was his collaboration, first collaboration with Scott Frank, you have them, you lock them in a trunk together. You have George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez,

you know, setting off fire alarms everywhere they go, you lock them in a trunk together and see what happens. Give the people the things that they want to make this an enjoyable to make this an enjoyable thing. And I do think that that's an underrated part of godless that you have to allow to accumulate because it does happen to be a little bit. It is long, but it's

We're just going to get one of these, so enjoy it. So you're talking about this idea that not every show has to be high-take. One show that I think we're going to do that was searching. Yeah, they made it available. They made the entire season available on it on the website while rolling it out week-by-week linearly. Week-by-week, right. And I think they get to the end of last season, and I think for the people who enjoyed it, even for the people who reset, each season has a mystery.

Or, for the first season, you know, it still has a different show. It's an interesting test case, and I'm going to reiterate with Chris said. We're not going to spoil the events of the first season, and I think we can talk about it without that, without doing so, because again, our producer Zach just started it, and I don't want to upset him any further than I already have today. I appreciate the show more than I enjoy it, and that has been brought to the fore more than I expected in the second season. If you look at the first season, I think it's actually doing something really sneaky and really terrific. This idea of weaponizing online culture and millennial angst and putting it in the service of a real world, quote unquote, real world with real consequences, where one character's idle involvement in other people's lives, which, as we all know, is incredibly available to all of us at any moment, suddenly becomes crushingly real. where her version of events, because what we all do, I mean, the show plays with this idea so well, something that we all do, which is if we are, you know, left alone with our phone for too long, and we can go down these rabbit holes, not just of, you know, weird Wikipedia pages,

but of people's lives, people that we once knew and who they've become and who they know now and what the relationship is between them in that picture that they've made public for some reason, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is what that show is, and it's written with a really savage and often very funny voice from Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, who are the co-creators. They'd made two indie movies before this, shepherded by Michael Showalter,

formerly of the state, director of the Big Sick. I'm struggling with this. They made the right choice for a television show, particularly the type of show that it is in 2017, because this is a sneaky success story for TBS, because they made a bet on who the show is for,

as evidenced by the way they put it all online, when they're doing the press for the second season and one of the narratives attached to it is we have the numbers that suggest if people watch one episode they watched all of them or that they continued watching. So knowing that, making it a deeply serialized show

where the second season picks up literally a second after the first season ends, that makes sense. That's the way we tell stories on television now. That said, I am increasingly less interested in it Because the first season was about how to, you know, oh my goodness, we are slipping into a mess. And the second season is how are we going to extricate ourselves from this mess? It allows the characters to go to interesting places, the actors to do interesting things.

But I am less interested in it because I think that all those themes I'm talking about, the sort of the overlapping of IRL and online and the sort of vapidity of these characters as the body count rises. That was interesting to me. And this is less, it's just less interesting to me. the ingredients are a little off. But look, this is where we are. If they had done a hard reboot, whether it's with the same characters or not, the show would have gotten ripped by the fans that made it a semi-success

because they don't buy that. You know, there is a generation of TV fans who reject things that you and I thought of as boilerplate of what you could and couldn't do because they say, that's just to TV. You know, just the idea of a character investigating a murder in season one, I'm not talking about search party, but theoretically. and then, oh, there's another murder here. That would get laughed out of the focus groups. You know, like, the show like Murder She Wrote, obviously is the extreme example of it.

But it's like, so this New England town is basically a hellscape, you know? Sure, sure. That's quote-unquote TV. Search Party is running anti-TV, not anti because it's against it, but it's literally running, it's just playing, it's running an opposite package of plays here. And I respect it. I really like some of the performers, particularly Meredith Hagner, I think is really funny as Porsche. I'm less inclined to keep going with it.

Where are you with it? I find that it's a... I'm looking at season two. A new story. I think I gave it a lot... It's true, and it's doing something... It's doing something smart, and it's doing something fresh, and it's doing it with a very specific voice,

and I don't know what more you can ask for a TV show in an era when there are, quite frankly, too many TV shows. Right. So it deserves credit, and it probably deserves your sampling, if you haven't already. And to that end, the entire first season remains available on TV. I believe without commercials, just to get you ready to watch the second season. So lightening it up a little bit.

Kind of presents, I was going to say light material in a dark way, but I guess it's kind of the same thing. I guess it is sort of like the surroundings are bleak. Yet the thing about Smilf, Smilf is fascinating. How many of you watch? Because I know you were just sampling it. Two. I really loved the first two.

I really liked the third. I watched the fourth episode, which aired last night. And frankly, it's a mess. And I don't mean that pejoratively. Like, it's just kind of a, it's a very, very messy episode that is, to me, completely fascinating, both for the subject matter, but also for the joy that I get out of watching a show. It's like watching a baby bird being born and learning how to walk or fly or neither. Like, this show can be anything right now, and particularly so.

because what Showtime has invested in here, and there was a process of going over scripts and blah, blah, blah, but they've invested in Frankie, who is a young, multi-hyphenate, as they say, and talent, hugely talented at all of them, with a very distinctive voice. And when you invest in someone who has a lot of voice and is just learning how to use the instrument,

it's fascinating. So she and I talked about this a couple weeks ago when she was on the podcast, that she was sort of annoyed by some of the criticism that, you know, it got generally positive reviews, but I think some of the critics were pointing out what I'm saying, which is that, well, this show can just be anything in any given moment. To me, that remains a positive.

Because, quite frankly, there are no other shows where a single mother character is, you know, lamenting the limit, societal limits of her gender. and then when walking through the supermarket basically grabs a can of Pringle, stuffs it down her pants, propositions a stock boy, and then fucks him in the back just to see how that makes her feel. You know, there is so many things going on in the show at any given moment, and to some, that may be too many. But I do think there's value for people who are fans of the medium

to see what it can be if the training wheels are taken off for someone. If someone deserving is given that freedom, at an early point in their career. And I think that's exciting. Yeah. I mean, Connie Britton is just hanging out on this show. Yeah. And she's having a great time.

It feels like they did all of her scenes in him. Bridget. Also, you've got to admire the stones on someone who created a television show for herself. And sometimes it seems like she did it just so she could shoot hoops with cameras on her. Yeah. Yeah. The character is, I mean, her character is, I mean, her character is, name is Bridget Bird. She's named her child, Larry Bird, intentionally. She's obsessed with

the Celtics. She still wants to be a professional basketball player herself. And many episodes are bookended by Bridget just shooting hoops alone in a park in Southie. And, you know, she has to understand that she's out here in a world where there are full-time television basketball critics like your guy, Chris Ryan, out there, just like wolves. You know, she's fearless. She did a lot of work in the post in that one basketball seat in the post. Huh. Really? You mean, in pick up? Yeah, I feel like I mean, Zach Matt could maybe speak to this,

but it's more of like a flow offense. Like, I think people, there's a lot of transition play. You don't see as many like half-court sets. It's just, it's an interesting market. It'd be like, why don't we send the shows? Which is what Bridget is talking about. That's incredible. So moving on, we're going to talk about two shows that we have interviews attached to.

Interview with Rachel Brazenan coming up shortly. but we should talk briefly about Marvel's Runaways, which is on Hulu. The first two or three episodes are available now for you to check out. And we're very excited that on Thursday, on the re-up, we are going to have not just the creators of the show, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, but also the creator of the comic book that the show is based on, Brian K. Vaughn. And I believe they haven't done any or many or any group interviews. So we're going to be able to talk about the process of adaptation and working together and not working together when it was appropriate. But this is cool.

I think that's going to be really cool. And this whole show is very cool to me because for people who don't know about it, this is the property that a friend of mine who is a big comic bookhead and works in this business as well said when the comic was being published over 10 years ago, this is the single best idea Marvel has had in 30 years. And it was Brian K. Vaughn's idea. basically saying that of everything that Marvel published 10, 20 years ago, everything Marvel publishes today, everything that has influenced and inspired the movies, this is the first truly fresh idea. And the idea is this. A bunch of kids sort of disaffected, not really friends. You know the friends you grow up with because your parents are friends and then you sort of have to see each other twice a year. A group of friends like that and a very rich enclave of Los Angeles get together and then in one night they discover that their parents are super villains and they run away from them. them. And that's the gist. And the comic was called Runaways. It was tremendous success for Marvel and truly a great read. You can get the collected editions. And for a lot of people, it was the holy grail of adaptations still remaining in the chamber. And Marvel, quite rightly, was pretty protective of it. They were trying to make it a movie for a while. And then Josh Schwartz,

who is a friend of the podcast and will be on a podcast Thursday, pride it from them, basically. And I think the pitch that he gave them was that his track record on shows like the OC and Gossip Girl is, you know, playing comic bookie drama, which existed in both of those shows, but trying to stay true to some emotional life of the characters, kids and adults. And Marvel TV signed off on it. They adapted it. Adapted an interesting way, loose enough to make it a TV show, I would say. But accurate, but in spirit enough to the TV show, to the comic book where there, yes, there still is a pet dinosaur. But for me, and we'll talk about this more on Thursday, what's really pleasurable about the show is that it scratches the same itch that Josh and Stephanie shows often do. It is a emotional soap opera, again, not in a judgmental, I don't mean that a judgey way, it's an emotionally true soap opera for teenage life, except it's sort of reimagined for this decade, which is a decade dominated by superheroics and superpowers. And I think that really, really works. And I think people who are afraid of the first word in the title, which is marvels with the apostrophe, should give it a look for that reason alone. I'm excited, man.

I'm really early. Yeah. And the story that you need to be and out of the point, you know, you kind of have to, but, you know, early. And it's interesting, too, to watch now knowing, we know, people who are fans of TV, know who these guys are. We know their voice. We know what they're good at. We know how much they worship at the church of John Hughes.

But they've also had to exist and have successfully existed in our current, media landscape. And so often, just like we talk about how, you know, writer directors, young writer directors with interesting voices sometimes or regularly have to submit to the machine, you know, and Trojan Horse their movie into a Marvel production or a what have you, they've been able to do that as well and watching them adapt. You know, so Gossip Girl gave them pre-existing IP and a framework for a type of story they wanted to tell. This is a more successful marriage, I would say. And obviously Gossip Girl ran for a bunch of years and was very popular. But to me, this is a much more successful marriage of what they can do and what can get greenlit.

Their sensibilities, yeah. We'll talk about that more on Thursday. Let's wrap up this part of our conversation by just by giving a shout out to the marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Some of you heard me rave about this months ago when Amazon put the pilot out there. The pilot is still available for Amazon Prime subscribers. The entire first season drops on Wednesday, the 29th. Such a weird choice by Amazon to put it out this week. I don't know why they didn't put it out last week,

so people could have watched it over Thanksgiving, but this is what they're doing. They have godless is block, man. I'm going to go on the limb and say these are the Venn diagram overlap. Maybe it's just watch listeners. I don't know. I can't imagine a ton of people loving both, but maybe. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an Amy Sherman Palladino show.

There are people who adore her work, her work with her husband, Gilmore Girls being the prime example of it. There are others who are allergic to it. Where do you fall on this spectrum generally? I'm actually not in either camp. I find Palladino head, but... For people who don't know that what we're talking about, and we talk about her writing style, it's basically dialogue

as written to the rhythm of the Chinese gold medal ping pong team. Highly literate, chock full of references, incredible patters. It's high-volume shooting. This show is about a young housewife, who is the titular Mrs. Maisel, and basically she's hyper-competent and very funny and wants to make a name, wants to be sort of a unique flame in this world, and in the pilot discovers the downtown stand-up comedy scene as her own life sort of crumbles.

So she's becoming a stand-up comic. Lenny Bruce is a character in the show. I just think it is so delightful with real heart, with great humor and intelligence, really fun performances. I think Rachel Brosnan's performance, it's just like John Hamm and Mad Men where maybe you'd seen that face before, that chin, and then you can't imagine the show being made without this person. I'm really excited for it. Amazon gave it a two-season order, and you can check it out on Wednesday. And before we get into this interview, I did want to say, obviously this is, This is a good look for Amazon to have the show right now. Amazon has been in hot water.

Many of its executives have been let go for either outright sexual misconduct or affiliation with that misconduct. And so for Amazon to have a proudly feminist show like this with women in front of and behind the cameras and key roles is great. I mean, it would have been great anyway, but I'm happy that Amazon has this show. Of course, they had the show already. so it's not exactly like a corrective. I did want to say, and you know about this, because Chris, you weren't in this interview, but I saw you right afterwards.

You guys will hear this interview, and I had a great time talking to Rachel. I did not ask her about Kevin Spacey and House of Cards, a show that she was on. And you'll hear when we're talking, I came close to it, I'd considered it, I had written some questions on that subject, and then I kind of punt it.

I guess that's kind of up to everybody else if I did or didn't. part of my reasoning was, well, she didn't really share many scenes with Kevin Spacey on House of Cards. The other reason was I became kind of uncomfortable talking to this young actress and feeling, putting, he was promoting her first starring role and basically saying, because of your gender or your IMDV page, you have to answer for this. I need you to explain this to me what's going on in Hollywood and what it means. And we talked about the gender imbalance in Hollywood. And we talked about the importance of shows like this and encouraging what. women to take up roles, not just as actors, but also behind the scenes. But I didn't actually get

the sound bite. And I'm just owning up to it ahead of time if you're wondering if I thought about it or if I was asked not to. I was not asked not to bring it up. And so I'm kicking myself a little bit because I would have liked to have heard her perspective specifically of what it was like on set and House of Cards. But you guys can be the judge of it. It did not feel appropriate in that moment. So we are going to break for some words from our sponsors. And then we're going to return with my interview with Rachel Brosnahan. you want equal time afterwards to be the ombudsman of the watch to critique my my journalism? Never, man. You're beyond reproach. I appreciate that. I don't know if that's true, but I appreciate it.

So here's the rundown. Interview with Rachel Brosnahan coming up after a quick break. Chris and I will be back at full strength, I hope, in good health on Thursday with a very special episode featuring Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, and Brian K. Vaughn to talk about runaways on Hulu, so you have time to catch up on that. read Queenpin by Megan Abbott. What else is there to say? Should we give people some information on how they can, like, GoFundMe Kleenex to your home? Look, man, I'm just going to be here training horses. I'm sure I'll be fine by Thursday.

You're probably allergic to horses. You're probably not even sick. That explains it. That explains it. Always a pleasure, even at a great distance, Chris. Here's some words from our sponsors, and we'll be right back with my interview with Rachel Brosnahan from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the homies at Sonos.

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Plus, this is still a Sonos guys. It's backed by a pair of Class D amplifiers and custom-built drivers, so the sound is face-melting and pure. You don't want to test the face-melting abilities during the lullabies, though. Just want to let you know about that from experience. Since Sonos is continually updating itself with new features, new services, and skills, your music and voice options. options will keep getting better over time. Here's the best part. Sonos is right now offering the listeners of the watch 10% off one order of $2,500 or less for any product on Sonos.com. So if you want the voice-controlled Sonos one, you know which promo code to use. If you want to get one of those play-based Johns for your television, this is a good deal for that.

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Here's the promo code. Watch 10. That's capital letters, W-A-T-C-H-10. At Sonos.com to receive this offer. Do it. It's Sonos. I'm very excited to be joined here in the studio, the very studio where we recorded

a Game of Thrones after show that my guest did not watch or know about. I'm sorry. The star of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. As I said to you before you started recording, I am such a fan of the show and particularly your performance in it.

Thanks. And I want to start with a real hardball here. I watched this pilot, as I hope many did. Amazon put the pilot out earlier in the year. It's been out for your year. You have no excuse now. I agree. You should have seen the after show, too, that we did here.

You did one? No. That was just a test. But we should. I watched the pilot as many did or hopefully will and my main thought was this is terrific, I love it but there is no way you can make the show without you and your performance in it.

The script is good. I mean, there's so many good things about it but it does seem to me like one of these pieces of writing where Amy Sherman Palladino wrote the script and I wonder just as she's writing it she has to be just banking on the universe giving her the right midge. When you read it, the script,

did you read this thinking, I can do this. This is a part I can do. I did. Perhaps naively so. You know, like I did. I read it and I was like, not so much I can do this, but I have to do this. I want to do this so badly. It's compelling. Yeah. I mean, I was in right away. The first page is the giant wedding monologue. I was sold by the bottom of the first page. I wanted to do it right away. and was like, I can do this until I started trying to do it and then was like, oh, God.

But loved it. When you say you do this, is it particularly the almost athletic quality of the dialogue? Yes. It's basically a giant tongue twister, the whole script. You have to do many mouth warmups, and I was unaccustomed to it at that point. But now, now I can talk with the best of them. This is good for podcasts. When you, so you read the script, you liked it.

I imagine that you had a meeting with Amy and her team about it. What were the early stages of this process like? Because again, to me, you don't make the show without you. So how did, take me behind that before you even had it? Super, super, super standard. So I read the script. I loved the script. I was like, please, dear Jesus, someone let me do this.

Jesus is not guiding this project. That's true. That will definitely know. But, you know, and so I went into like a very standard meeting with casting directors first, took a first stab at it with very little time to prepare, and then got a call saying that they wanted me to fly out to L.A. to meet with Amy and Dan and do sort of an informal screen test. And then I, well, so between then and when I was supposed to go,

I contracted what can only be referred to as the plague. I swear to you, I've never been so sick in my entire life. Oh, no. No, just like went down in a hardcore way for about 10 days and like missed. So I missed my appointment as the point of those. I missed my meeting with them. I had to reschedule and then was so paranoid that they were going to give it to somebody else. I rallied like way too soon.

So my second audition with them was just all I can remember is sweat, like so much sweat. Like so much sweat, like sweating through my clothes, stopping to blow my nose, tissues stuffed out my pants and in my bra, stopping to powder my face. I had to take off my shoes at one point because I was sweating so much that I couldn't walk in them anymore. Yeah. This seems like a choice that could have been memorable, you know. Yeah, you definitely couldn't forget it. I mean, I changed the ecosystem in that room. To be clear, this is not a part one could play on cold medicine.

So you could not do that. So they had to deal with what you were bringing. They did. So that was specifically the heat that sold them on you, do you think? That would be a question for them ultimately at the end of the day. But here we are, huh? Okay, so this part, in some ways, I imagine it's like putting on a cape because the character of Midge can, you know, obviously she has her costumes, which are spectacular.

I know. But she's so heroic and super competent in so many ways and so good at so many things. So I imagine that that is an incredibly appealing. part of the role and fun. Yeah. Yet the key to the part is the fragility underneath it and the willingness of this superhero to fly boldly into the unknown and or a brick wall. Yes, both.

That seems to be, that seems to me to be quite a challenge for an actor. Yeah, but it's a welcome one, you know. One of the things that, one of the many things that drew me to the script right away is that I realized in reading it that this is one of the most, if not the most, unapologetically and genuinely confident women I've ever read. I've certainly never played one. And that felt important to me and radical in a way that it shouldn't anymore. And so the challenge of trying to find all of the different pieces that make Midge,

the extraordinary woman that she is, was exciting. It's not very often that you get to sink your teeth so deeply into something as an actress. There aren't very many roles like this out there. And so I was excited by the challenge and incredibly honored to have been given the opportunity to go for it. How do you keep one hand on the humanity of the character when you are carried along? And I mean that with all the fun that implies like a fun house ride with the costumes and the sets and the era and this just crackling doesn't do a justice dialogue. that's like everyone is playing ping pong at the same time. Yeah.

It could veer into cartoonishness, frankly, in the wrong hands. How do you, and I guess the larger question behind that is how does everyone involve keep it, keep the emotions present? I think all of those things that you're naming, they actually help us do our jobs better. You know, the extraordinary costumes, a set design. We walk on to set. We have been physically transformed. And the Kleenex have been removed from your body. They've been all removed from all of my crevices.

And we feel like we've time traveled. You know, and so there's very little pretending involved. We don't have to work so hard to try and imagine what the world looks like. It's there in front of us. And so all we have to do is be well prepared, you know, with all this monstrous amounts of dialogue. And be present and be people. I think that helps so much that everybody else is at the top of their game. They're taking such good care of us.

Our only job is to show up an act. Everything else is removed. The show is so deeply Jewish at times that I almost become, all the time. I almost become uncomfortable. Like, not in a bad way. No, like, I love it. But in the kind of way where I was like, you know, should I put a muzzah on my door? Just calling attention to it.

Like, that's how I feel when I watch the show sometimes. Not since the reference to the standing order at Cantors on Transparent have I felt so, like, Deeply, culturally, not necessarily religiously. Yeah. Seen. That's nice. That's lovely. I feel like that's a wild thing.

How do you feel about that? How do you take that? Well, this world, so I'm not Jewish personally. By the way, Mazel Toff then, because you sell it. Thank you. Well, I think part of that is that I, so I grew up in a really non-religious household, so we're not really anything as it were. Like many Jews.

Yes. There you go. But I grew up in this, in this. intensely saturated Jewish culture in a very predominantly Jewish town in the North Shore of Chicago. And so this script and this world, this very unapologetically Jewish world that the show creates, actually felt very familiar to me. That's, I grew up right in the middle of it. You know, every Friday spending the night at a friend's house, I'd go to Temple with them in the morning.

I was welcome. So you're saying you were more Jewish than me. I may be. You're stunting a little bit. I could maybe bar mites for you. It doesn't take the first time. I think it's probably a good idea. Yeah.

So it felt familiar, I guess, where I'm saying. Well, speaking of other worlds, the other aspect of the show that I need to bring up is the comedy part of it. Obviously, the journey of the show, I imagine. I've only seen the first few episodes of the first season. I know you're guaranteed a second. I hope there will be many more. is about Midge's entry into this other hidden world of stand-up comedy and performing. Stand-up, fictional stand-up is such a tricky business.

And I'm mad, because you have to theoretically be funny, but you're writing about being funny, which sort of often leeches the funny out of it. Even trickier here because you have to articulate someone who is learning to be funny. So it has to be funny, but not too funny. How is my question? How is that balancing act to change? That's a loaded question.

I think, yes. So I think one of the major keys to that is this last thing that you said, which is that, you know, Midge is learning to be funny. I'm not a comic. I've never done stand-up. I've actually never really done comedy. So I had the luxury of learning alongside Midge with the guidance of Amy,

who's one of the funniest women I've ever met, and her brilliant and hilarious script. So I feel like that was a huge part of making this believable. As I said, it's similar to what you asked earlier about, you know, this, how do we keep it from being cartoonish? Well, everything's taking care of for us, so we just show up an act. It honestly feels the same. Midge's style of comedy is this stream of consciousness. She doesn't know she's doing it.

She just is a funny woman who has a really sharp and unique perspective on the world. And she's very emotional. and that's where this impromptu stand-up is born. Yeah, it does not come from her head. It comes from something much deeper. Exactly. You know, Alex Borsdine said something really funny to me while we were shooting, but it feels like I understand it differently now.

She said to me while we were shooting, so the way we shoot the stand-up stuff is we have all these background actors and we're in our gaslight set, and we run it a couple times with everyone there to sort of see where they naturally laugh, where we need to make them laugh. Encourage them to laugh. And then we pull them out for sound purposes.

And I do the sets to an empty house. Oh, that must be fun. Yeah. Well, so as somebody who's never done it, that doesn't feel that strange to me. Oh, true. Right, of course, because it's a performance. Because I don't know. Yeah.

It's like a monologue. You know, I don't, Alex Borsstein said to me that a stand-up comedian could never have played this part because they would want to sink into a hole and die the minute that they were playing to an empty room and it was echoing back to them. Or performing the, performing. in quotes the thing that is the most natural to them. Exactly. And so I think that that is what, that's probably what helped us, my lack of knowledge of what it was like to be a stand-up.

Because I've heard anecdotally from people, even people who are veteran performers, that physically standing on a stage with a microphone is totally destabilizing and freaky. It's just not, it's vulnerable in a different way, it's physically different. Did you have that experience? I mean, because clearly you've been acting.

You are a professional actor. You have stood on a stage and delivered to the back of the house. But that's a different thing. The physically dealing with the microphone was something that was a little bit uncomfortable to me. That's just not how I've ever performed on a stage. That said, you whip it out of the – you do the one thing that they do. I phrased that poorly, but you remove the microphone from the stand. That was all Amy.

With a certain head of steam, it's very good. Gusto. Thank you. Yeah, that was all. That was all Amy. But yeah, I mean, I think – and then as we went on during the season, I actually became less and less able to perform without the audience. And I think that part of that was that as Midge is refining this raw and natural skill that she has,

I was able to learn some of the more technical aspects of comedy. You know, there's an episode – I want to say it's episode four where they're talking about what she needs to learn. She needs to learn to learn to work a room. She needs to learn how to stand on the stage and how to handle a mic. She needs to learn to read an audience. and have a dialogue with them. Those are all things that, as somebody who's never done stand-up, I've never done before.

But I got to practice as Midge was practicing. And so it's not until, I want to say, like, episode seven or eight, that she really actually gets a tight ten and starts to perform real stand-up. Well, one of the gifts of the show is that you were given two years of runway, right? There's two years. Oh, yes. Two seasons. I'm sorry.

Like I meant before it. I was like, God, that would have been amazing. In a way, you've been preparing for this your whole life. My whole life. But two seasons guarantee, which is a very nice thing. What interests you about the character, knowing you're spending this much time with it? Often when I talk to people who have, I mean, you've worked in series television before, but you are the lead in the show.

That's a lot of time to live with someone. And obviously the show sets up a transformative path for the character. But what excites you about that journey and what do you think the show, where do you think the show can go in that time? It could go so many different places. This is a really interesting period in history that we're living in. It's a very transformative time for comedy. Comedy was changing a lot during that time.

The world's relationship to women is a huge part of this show and something that we'll surely deal with moving forward that we are still dealing with today. Yeah, we're still fighting so many of the same battles. This show sets up this idea that this is a woman who thought she had found her voice. And it turns out she has one that she had no idea existed.

And I really think we've only scratched the surface by the time we reach the end of this season. I still don't think we have a really good idea, but we still don't know exactly what kind of comedian Midge is going to become. And I'm excited to see what happens to her as she starts performing in different venues, as she gains more notoriety,

as she gets haters, you know, like what happens? happens to her then. And I feel like that could take us seasons and seasons and seasons. Because right now it's like a secret break with society. Yes. In the place, the part of New York where that was allowed. But as the spotlight turns or she takes it outside of it, it changes things. Yeah. You alluded to it. It's everywhere. I think that it's fair to say that the show comes at a very good time, not for the world, but also for Amazon.

Happy that this is an Amazon original and one of the best, I think. it feels glib to ask you a general question about this, but I do think it's wonderful to see this show and this character at this moment. I do too. Can you articulate better than I can? Why? Well, I think it's this idea that, you know, at best, television holds up a mirror to the world that we live in. It forces us to take a better look at ourselves. And with a period piece and one like this, it's forcing us to look both at how far we've come

and how far we have not come. It highlights a lot of the battles we're still fighting today, and this is a comedy. You know, it's very lighthearted. It's obviously going to approach it in a different way. But I don't know if I can articulate better than you can why it's important, but I think more than anything, this specific show, all these conversations that we're having about our industry right now

and how do we fix things. And it's not just our industry. It's every industry. It's this country. We have a deep-rooted societal problem with abusive power. And how do we fix it? We're asking this question every day right now. I think shows like this are one part of an extremely multifaceted and long-term solution.

This is a show that is created by, written by, directed by, produced by an extraordinary woman. And an extraordinary man who loves extraordinary women about an extraordinary woman at a time when it wasn't acceptable to be. as extraordinary as she is. And I think that we need more women in positions like Amy's. We need more women, more people of color, in positions of power and influence. And so I think at best this show is a part of a much larger conversation about what needs to change and how we get more content like this.

This is one woman's story. There are so many that still have to be told. That's what's so striking about the show. coming on the end, I think we've seen the end of an era that everyone lauded as a golden age of television that really spent a good portion of its time telling a very particular kind of story. It's there in the title of that book that was written about it, difficult men. And, you know, you're a veteran of a show like that, too, of House of Cards. Many wonderful shows.

I mean, I'm not going to, I will never pretend to criticize Sopranos are breaking out of the wire as masterpieces that they are. However, it's incredible and exhilarating, both as a fan of the industry and as a fan of television, to watch a character like Midge deal with difficult men who could or would be the star of the show or a different show. Her husband, her father, her father-in-law. I mean, some of these are more broadly drawn than others. But she deals with them. She dispatches with them and then gets on with the business of her own life. and, you know, politics aside, that makes good art.

Yes. It's incredibly exciting to watch. Well, she's fully fleshed out. She's a three-dimensional person. You know, we've obviously been talking about this show a lot these last couple weeks as we're approaching our air date. And something that I keep coming back to is that I know women like Mitch, more than one. You know, the... You said you went to synagogue on...

I did. Yeah. And I know so many women who are... proud of who they are, who are ambitious, who are empowered, and there are not enough of them represented in television. You know, this idea of the anti-hero, which is also something that's been a huge part of the golden age of television, as we call it. Where are the women? I think Claire Underwood is a really great example of that on House of Cards, and Robin is extraordinary on that show. But where are the women like that at the center? Too often they're tutting the

men and telling them to, you can't have your fun, murdering people or making drugs or whatever it might be. Yeah. And of course, no shots to the actresses who played those parts, but they played what they were given. Yeah, and it doesn't make those stories any less valuable. It just means that we need more of them and we need more of them from different perspectives. We need our content. This is, you know, stretches from the news to film and TV to literature to radio, all.

all of these mediums, we need it to better reflect the world we live in. It's, there's one group at the top right now, and they control the money. They have their, they have their finger on the button, really. They control what gets made. They are the people who have the ability to greenlight these projects, and we have to have different voices in the room up there. What a tragedy on so many levels, if we are in an era when so many shows can get made, when there's so many ways to watch things and process them and channels and avenues and deals,

that we're just going to use that to tell the same stories? I have hope, though. I think, obviously, we know that we've been talking about this for what feels like such a long time. We know that this is a problem. We've known it forever. And we have yet to follow through in any kind of meaningful way. I don't know the exact numbers, but the number of women who have directed studio projects is, is just so so shamefully low.

I think with everything that's going on in Hollywood right now, as long as we don't let this news cycle continue to move as quickly as it is and just brush past it and forget about it. As long as we continue to hold each other accountable, I feel hopeful that this could be the moment that things really begin to change. I do. I love your optimism. I hope so too. But in a way to put a bow on it, I think a show like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fills me with hope and joy. I think so too.

For people just tuning for the last five minutes of our conversation might not know it, but it's a delightful show. Thank you. I mean, it truly is. It is a pleasure to watch. When it seems to appeal, I think there's this understanding that women make shows for women. Yeah. But it appeals to women. It appeals to men.

It appeals to teens. teenagers, it appeals to old folks, you know, I think there's something in there for everyone. And doing good sounds so trite, but it's not homework. No. You know, to let Amy write the story she wants to write, to let you play it the way you want to play it or the way Amy tells you to play it, depending. Both. Hopefully a good collaboration. Yeah, exactly.

But something, I feel like that's my main takeaway. It's just, I love the show at the beginning of the year when I saw it, but I love it even more now because it's nice to have nice things. Yes. So let's not ruin nice things. No. And so you are, we know you have the second season. When do you go back to work? In the spring. Okay. So you have a little time. Yeah. But which you will spend in weather, as you said, not here in Los Angeles. Yes. No. I will hopefully be spending it in New York. I love winter in New York.

I mean, I love snow boots. Wow. I know. I know. I don't know. Weather feels like it's cleansing in a way. You know, you can really follow time as we were talking about before we were done on there. It's appropriate to have weather. I didn't realize the thing that I would miss most from the East Coast was East Coast summer. Because East Coast summer, well, punishingly hot and humid and mosquitoes and et cetera, et cetera. And the Second Avenue subway and the way it smells.

It's earned. Yes. People are so happy because you've earned it. Yeah. And I think. Weather is the great equal, I agree with that too. Yeah. Weather and the subway and the two together.

Yes, yes. Yes. All right. Well, now that we've solved pretty much everything. I think we've done it. Sexism in Hollywood. And which coast is better. Yeah.

Anything else? Maybe we'll save it for the next time. Yeah, next time. Okay, Rachel, thank you for taking the time to talk to me. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by the homies at Sonos, presenting the brand new Sonos One. Sonos One blends great sound with Amazon Alexa, the easy-to-use voice service for hands-free control of your music and more. Use your voice to play songs while you cook in the shower, talking in the kids at night. Wherever you listen to music, radio podcasts, this is an awesome way to do it.

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