Propped on stage by the EW, the cast of this Prime Video series all kept mementos from the Emmy winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. With props, costume pieces, and bold splashes of furniture, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has rippled through history since 2017. Full of drama billowing with humor, it’s no marvel that the cast, after five vibrant seasons, wanted to bring some of their past home with them. Before the cast lands its final joke on May 26, here’s a roll call of what each cast member took from the set.
“I was given some of Abe’s wardrobe, which I will treasure forever,” Tony Shalhoub (Monk), who plays Abe Weissman, told EW. “It was made for me from scratch. [Costume designer] Donna Zakowska really took care of me, so I have a lot of those beautiful pieces.”
“We were not allowed to take anything large, so I only took things that could fit into Rose’s purse,” Marin Hinkle (Two and Half Men) said. She is the woman under the mask of Rose Weissman. “At different moments I would take an old beautiful perfume bottle or what she uses for blush in the bathroom or a tiny little plastic tea set that her grandchildren had. Or a scarf she had in Paris.
“I was able to take one of her scarves that she had at, I think it was the Rodin Museum, when she said goodbye to Paris. It was six or seven things that I have as markers of her whereabouts. Michael Zegen gave me a Catskills postcard that was framed, saying like, ‘My time in the Catskills.’ I dream about all of us getting two weeks off every summer and being able to go to like our quote unquote summer camp no matter how old we are.”
“We had a big fire sale at the end of the year,” Michael Zegen (Boardwalk Empire) revealed. On set he plays Joel Maisel. “They had a costume sale and a prop sale. I actually wasn’t able to make it to the prop sale, so I was bummed about that. But at the costume sale, I was able to get a bunch of my stuff. I got a couple of suits — it’s not like I’m going to wear them because they’re fitted for the 1960s, which is not really a modern suit, but it’s nice to have. I have a ton of Joel’s ties, which pretty much all of them were vintage. I got a bunch of other things like shirts. Everything was tailored for me, so it’s like, how can I not take this? There was a few coats that they built for me that I took. I might actually buy a storage room for all the stuff that I got.”
“Amazon provided us with many gifts over the years,”said, Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects), on the ballot as Moishe Maisel. “Wardrobe sent me a couple of suits. I quit smoking even cigars, 15 years ago. But there was a stack of fancy ashtrays in the living room of the Maisel house where Moishe and Shirley lived. For some reason, it always caught my eye. It reminded me of an ashtray I would see as a child growing up in our family Jewish homes. From my office at the Garment District shop, the last time I shot there, there was Moishe’s certificate on the wall that was framed that props had built. I might have taken that without asking permission. And then a dress for my Mrs. There was always rows of the same dress, right? And so I asked wardrobe and they said, ‘Actually, that’s set design. We didn’t make those.’ And set design was like, ‘Yeah, you can take one of the 30 dresses.'”
“They invited everyone in the cast to come to the set with all the furniture and everything,” Caroline Aaron (21 Jump Street), shining on set as Shirley Maisel. “And I was in Montreal working, so I sent my husband and I said, ‘You have to go to this and take things off the set.’ Everything was so delicious to look at. And he came back with two beautiful flower vases that had been in Shirley’s house and a candy dish. He went, ‘There was really nothing else.’ And I thought, Okay. So then the next week I went over to Tony’s house and two chairs from Moishe and Shirley’s house were in Tony’s apartment. I went, ‘Wait a minute, those are my chairs.’ And he said, ‘I know, aren’t they beautiful?’ So now I have to go visit my furniture at Tony’s apartment. But I do use those flower vases all the time. I have a little bit of Shirley and Moishe with me.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been on a television set that was so goddamn detailed,” said Reid Scott (Veep), who suits up as Gordon Ford. “Things that you would never see that the camera will never look at. There were TV Guides flying around the office that were like, ‘Look who’s talking about Gordon Ford,’ things like that. There was my comedy album. They made a Gordon Ford comedy album that was in my office. I took that. My favorite was, there was this huge sign that hung on the wall in back of the studio audience at the Gordon Ford Show that was this beautiful hand-carved sign. They sent it to me and it’s massive and it’s hanging in my office.”
Luke Kirby (Take This Waltz), knocking over the pins as Lenny Bruce, refused to name the piece he took. “It belonged to Lenny and he didn’t change that much over the course of the years,” he hinted. “There’s not too many things to choose from.” We guess that maybe he took one of Lenny’s sports coats, to which he replies, “You look out for me on the street and maybe one day you’ll see it.”
“I definitely have my [key] necklace and I have some of the wardrobe pieces,” said Alex Borstein (Family Guy), who wears her character Susie Myerson like a necklace. “There’s a couple things from the set of the Gaslight Club, the original club, that I have. But definitely the necklace was the first thing that I said, ‘I really want to keep this.'”
“As soon as I knew it was ending, we all started stealing stuff,” said Rachel Brosnahan (House of Cards), laughing it up as Midge Maisel on the show. “I stole an ashtray from the Toots Shore set. Michael stole a bunch of stuff for us from the Steiner Resort in season 2. He gave me a blanket from the resort, and I have a paddle board, one of things with a ball on the end that you whack around. I took a lot of coats, and a horse statue from Midge’s apartment that my parents really wanted. They came to visit one day, and [creator] Amy [Sherman-Palladino] told me I could take it, and then she told me it was never going to be seen before we shut down the apartment set. She said that they would never catch it on camera again, and that I could steal it. And then of course, our brilliant set decorator noticed instantly that it was missing, and then it was retrieved from me, and then later I stole it a second time.”
“We actually kept the painting that was over Midge’s mantle in her original apartment in the pilot,” said creators, writers, and executive producers of the show, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino (Gilmore Girls). “That was hung wherever she ended up, when she was living with her parents. It was hanging at every set she was on. We grabbed that and it’s now hanging in our house. We also have the portrait of Lorelai Gilmore and Emily Gilmore and Richard Gilmore that was hanging in the Gilmore House for seven years. We have that hanging in our house. We should give tours. $10 to start and then, we’ll pump it up slowly.”