In its first season, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won five Emmys, and the second season, premiering on Amazon Video on December 5th, promises to be another prize-winner.
The show debuted only two months after the #MeToo movement initiated, adding to the show’s import and relevance despite its being set during the 1950’s. Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Midge, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the filming of the second season. “It still feels like we’re shooting in a vacuum a little bit, because it’s a really intense show to shoot,” Brosnahan admitted. “We have a lot of pages in a very short period of time, really long hours, and so we do get to escape a little bit. We’re so grateful that people have responded to the show the way they have, and then we get to dive back in and disappear to do the work some more.”
The first episode of the new season opens with Midge working her new job at the switchboard underneath her former workplace at the makeup counter. Barbra Streisand’s song “Just Leave Everything to Me” plays as the camera pans down to Midge underground. According to Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of the show, she purposefully chose the song: “I got hypnotized by the song on a JetBlue flight where I was watching Hello Dolly. I got obsessed, and the whole concept of ‘just leave everything to me’ is just so Midge. She can just step into any void and take it over and make it better.”
Despite the trying circumstances that season one left Midge in, this season shows her as more determined than ever. “We wanted to start the season off with something musical and very energetic, especially since we were going to see Midge sort of in a dungeon,” Sherman-Palladino explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “But even in a dungeon, Midge has energy and perk and a great skirt. No dungeon will hold that skirt down!”
This season also holds some surprises like new locations in Paris and the Catskill Mountains. “Even by the time we got to the Golden Globes, we were well into figuring out what season two was going to be,” said Sherman-Palladino. “We went to Paris because we had laid in groundwork for it with Rose [Midge’s mother], that she had happy memories in Paris where she went to school, and so having become unhappy with her circumstances, we thought she’d run to a place where she was unabashedly happy before she got married.” This season focuses on Midge’s secret life that she keeps from her parents’ prying eyes.
Concerning the ending of season one, Brosnahan addressed the many questions fans had. “The big question at the end of season one is whether or not Midge and Joel are going to get back together, and that’s explored throughout season two,” Brosnahan stated cautiously. “They have children together, so they’ll never be completely out of each other’s lives, and there may be various points where they feel like they’re back on the same page. But just as quickly, one of them will always take a step forward while the other takes a step back, or sideways, or on a diagonal. They will, as is true for so many relationships, continue to just miss each other, perhaps forever.”
Whatever ends up happening, the much anticipated season two appears to hold just as many laughs and determination as the first, as well as many surprises.