Tony Shalhoub on how ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ ‘couldn’t have ended in a better way’ [Complete Interview Transcript]

Latasha Ford and Marcus James Dixon
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During a recent Gold Derby video interview, contributing editor Sam Eckmann spoke in-depth with Tony Shalhoub (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) about Season 5 of his Amazon Prime Video comedy, which is eligible at the 2023 Emmys. Watch the full video above and read the complete interview transcript below.

The veteran actor portrayed patriarch Abe Weissman for five seasons, the father of Miriam (Rachel Brosnahan) and husband of Rose (Marin Hinkle). In the final episodes, Abe finally tells his daughter that he’s “proud” of the rough road she took to become a stand-up comic in the 1950s. Shalhoub won three Emmy Awards for “Monk” (lead in 2003, 2005, 2006) and another for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (supporting in 2019).

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Looking back on the show as a whole, Shalhoub told us in our webchat, “We were not ready to let it go. But having seen Season 5 now, I feel they couldn’t have ended it in a better way.” He added, “I mean, they really did serve each one of these characters and their character arcs.”

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Sam Eckmann: Hello everyone, I’m Sam Eckmann of Gold Derby here with the wonderful Tony Shalhoub of the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. So bittersweet to let this one go, but it’s been a great journey. And Abe has a very particular interactions with his grandkids. He becomes very obsessed with his grandkids this season, which results in some of my favorite comedic bits. Where do you think that comes from for him?

Tony Shalhoub: Yeah, I think it’s part of Abe’s overall character arc over five seasons. I remember recently for a totally different reason was watching the pilot again, and there’s this one moment in the pilot where I’m trying to get…. I’m in my study and Ethan, the very young grandson, is there, and I need him out of there. And I remember this one… I registered this one particular moment where Midge and Rose are talking in the bedroom, in the kids’ room, the baby’s room. And you see the door open and just you see Abe push his grandson, without saying anything, just push Ethan into the room and with giving Midge the stink eye, like get this kid out of my hair. And then the door closes. And that was such a great indicator of where he was when we started this story. And just that whole mentality of kids should be seen and not heard and most of the time not even seen.

SE: Yeah.

TS: And so just the fact that they connect Abe to these two grandchildren in a significant way in the fifth season is just, I don’t know, there’s a real indication of how they see the evolution of this character and all those relationships.

SE: And I think it’s an example and I think about him trying to discover the genius and putting things in their path to bring out their genius. So much of the comedy of this series comes out of the characters like taking themselves deathly seriously. So I’m always curious, does it feel serious on set filming those or is it funny on set?

TS: It is very funny on set. I mean the work we take very seriously, but we’re all kind of in love with each other’s characterizations and what the writers give us all to do, all the juicy stuff that they put in front of us. But no, it’s delightful. And you’re absolutely right. It is an exaggerated kind of, especially with Abe, an exaggerated sort of self-importance and where he just seems to believe that he knows everything and that he’s figured out everything in terms of his position in life, his stature in society, his role as a father, grandfather and husband. And really it’s the whole five years has been an ongoing discovery of how little he really understands and in a way, but there’s self discovery within that, so some redeeming quality there.

SE: Well, there’s a lot of, you have one particular scene which really hit my heart when Abe is at that table, the dinner table at the restaurant with his coworkers and has this realization, I think you say Miriam was who she was all along and perhaps he didn’t properly support her true self. What were your thoughts when you first read that scene?

TS: Well, I was thrilled that they gave Abe this kind of revelatory moment, this level of understanding. And on another level, I related to it very well because I have two daughters that are around Midge’s age and I’m constantly seeing them in new ways and in new lights. And it’s humbling to realize that they understand, they know things. They move through their lives totally separate from what we thought we were teaching them and what we thought we were instilling in them. And you know what I mean? They come into the world with these certain sets of tools and certain levels of resourcefulness that we like to think as parents that we’re doing it all and we’re doing maybe 10% of it if we’re lucky.

SE: Yeah. It’s a scene where, for a show that is very rapidly paced, all of a sudden everything really slows down. You can even tell when that one character says he’s looking at the piles of his life in his apartment and Abe really latches onto that and everything just slows. What did that feel like filming that kind of moment where there’s such focus?

TS: Yeah, that’s an interesting question because when we were working on it, we did a lot of takes because we had to do singles on everybody in various sizes. And Dan was directing that one, Dan Palladino, and he would come over to me between takes and say, because I was in the Maisel rhythm there for a while, which is just rapid fire all the time. And he said, “You can really let this breathe and don’t feel that you have to rush it.” And God, it was such a luxury to really, to be able to drop down into it and not feel like, is this scene going to be too long or uncuttable in some ways. And it took me a few takes to really, really embrace that idea that it was kind of needed to be moving at the pace of Abe’s real, in the moment, thoughts and discovery.

SE: And then it’s really wonderful to see you get the moment with Midge at the end in the final episode where you get to tell her, “I’m proud of you” and have that moment that really hasn’t been there this whole time. I feel like it must feel incredible to be able to play something new in a series that has gone on for this many seasons. Is that correct?

TS: But that’s been true for throughout this from season one to two to three and all the way through because I discovered a lot of things about Abe once we went to the Catskills, for example. Once he is in his different environment, wearing different clothes, drinking quite a bit, letting his hair down a little bit. And then even in Paris too, of course before the … rediscovering or reimagining his relationship with his wife, which went through a huge shift at that time. And then in three, at the end of three, letting go of his two precious jobs at Bell Labs and at Columbia and reinventing himself as a theater critic. And then, I mean, it’s been a constant, they’ve given me so many different new things to play and explore and that’s rare in a series where most of the time in a long-running show you find your little corner of the world and you just live there. So this was very different.

SE: Yeah. Well, speaking of your onscreen wife, Mara and I were talking about the amazing sequence of the two of you trying and failing spectacularly to hail a cab on the Upper West Side. It’s one of those signature long takes, continuous takes from Mrs. Maisel. Did those ever become easier, thinking to this one versus when you started in season one?

TS: You would think that they would become easier, but they kept raising the bar on us. It wasn’t just, it was difficult enough in the early going to move from room to room within the apartment, for example, in a one or where you’re going from the living room through the hallway into the kitchen, out of the kitchen, down to the bedroom, into the bathroom, all in one without a cut. So that’s one level of difficulty, but to be out on the street with literally with 50 or 60 cars on Central Parkway, just when you think like, oh, okay, I got this. Then the next kind of knuckle ball would get thrown and you have to try to swat away at that. So no, the answer is, the short answer is no. They never got easier, but they were always challenging and they always… It was kind of, we felt in a way after we learned how to do this, that they were honoring us because they trusted that we could do it. Forget the level of difficulty. If they believed that we could do it, then we could believe that or we could have that level of confidence. And so that helped.

SE: Yeah. You mentioned before the kind of concept of having these big revelations with the character throughout the series, and I think that’s one of the most satisfying things of watching the show is these great transition arcs for everyone and they all, to quote Abe, “They realize who they were all along” in a sense.

TS: Yeah.

SE: What is kind of, now that you’re at this place looking back on it, what’s the most satisfying part of Abe’s journey to play?

TS: I guess for me the most profound part is that he goes from, again from season one as a, he’s a career professional. I mean, he takes his job and his place in the community so very seriously. And the family, not that the family is so secondary, but he assumes that it’s all, he’s done everything right. He’s checked all the boxes, everybody’s fine, they’re married, they’re having their families, their husbands, their spouses are fine, everything’s stable. And what we discovered we come to at the end of, well in the middle and at the end of season five is that his priorities have shifted from his work life to his family life in his role again as a husband, as a father, and as a grandfather.

SE: Yeah. Now that all the episodes have aired, it’s finished, what kind of emotions were coming up as this was coming to an end? Has it sunk in yet that it’s already ended?

TS: No, I mean it’s hard to swallow. The ending, the last episode, the last part, the last sequence of the last episode was very emotional for all of us. We were not ready to let it go. But having seen season five now, I feel they couldn’t have ended it in a better way. I mean, they really did serve each one of these characters and their character arcs. And I thought the ending was really, the whole last half of the fifth season was just so gratifying. And so we have to just relax into that and accept what is and move forward. And with the understanding that these 45 or 50 episodes, however many there are, are going to live on, and they’re going to be, I think they’re somewhat timeless and they’re going to have a long, this show is going to have long, long legs.

SE: Yes. Well, and you’re familiar with shows having long legs because you’re actually revisiting a character you said goodbye to with Monk.

TS: Yeah.

SE: With this new film. What was it, because you played that character for a very long time, what was intriguing to you about revisiting him all these years later?

TS: Yeah, well we had done it for eight seasons. We had done 125 episodes. So it’s been 14 years since we, almost 14 since we’ve wrapped that and the idea of revisiting and rebooting that idea was kicked around over the last decade or so, couple of times. But there never frankly seemed like a compelling enough reason to do it. But then the pandemic hit and that really kind of jarred everyone into thinking, well this, then we did that public service announcement for Peacock where we see Monk in the thick of it all. And then we started thinking, well, not only would this have impacted this character deeply, but it’s changed the world around him too. And maybe given others an appreciation for where they always sort of thought he was neurotic and kooky and a little nutty that now maybe he’s become kind of a visionary and more relatable. So we thought, well, let’s just take a drive down that road. And so that’s kind of where we start with this episode. But Monk’s in a very, very dark place when we revisit him and I kind of like that. I think, I mean the comedy is certainly going to be there, but he’s in a place we have not seen him before.

SE: I would imagine the pandemic would be extremely difficult for him. So I’m looking forward to see how he deals with it. And it’s sort of a interesting place we’re living into where things that we have said goodbye to can live on. So perhaps even Abe Weissman will live on one day at a public service announcement someday.

TS: I hope that and more. Yeah, Abe will forever be a part of me.

SE: Yes. Well, thank you so much for a fantastic ending to this season and series as a whole. And if you’re watching out there, subscribe to Gold Derby. Stick with us this season. Tony, thank you so much.

TS: Great talking to you. Bye.

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