'Mrs. Maisel' Stars Say Friendship Forged on Set Will Last 'Forever'

Alex Borstein and Rachel Brosnahan take us behind the scenes of the last season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

There’s a Los Angeles restaurant located on Sunset Boulevard called Horses. It’s so white-hot popular that, per The New York Times, its waiting list on a random Thursday night last summer was a whopping 1,784 names long. Regular patrons include Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

Please note this is also the spot where Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein recently dined together to mark a special occasion. The actresses, you see, had just wrapped their Amazon Studios series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Now, over Caesar salads and other dishes, they reminisced about an incredible six-year ride that included highs (matching Emmy wins), lows (a pandemic-induced hiatus) and everything in between. “We got a little nostalgic,” Brosnahan told Parade. “We talked work and life and just how crazy it was that we closed this chapter together.”

When it all began in early 2017, the two didn’t realize their work would prove to be such a cultural force and critical darling. A sparkling, lightning-fast comedy set in the 1950s and ‘60s, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel chronicles Miriam “Midge” Maisel (Brosnahan), a prototypical Jewish New York City housewife and mother who leaves her cheating husband and embarks on a most unconventional stand-up comedy career. She gets there with the help of her straight-shooting manager, Susie Myerson (Borstein). Though Midge has been at odds with her family, ex-in-laws and fellow comics throughout the journey, the pair have never left each other’s sides.

“It’s very much been a dance,” Borstein says. “In each season, one of us leads and one of us follows. I think it’s cool that Susie was the one who spotted Midge in a nightclub and said, ‘I believe in you.’ Then she’s constantly being taught that Midge was seeing a much bigger picture in her head.” Seconds Brosnahan, “They are each other’s ride or die. They’re each other’s first phone call. They trust and believe in each other’s abilities to achieve their dreams.”

Viewers last saw Midge exiting Carnegie Hall in a blizzard and reinvigorated to chase her ambitions. For fear of spoilers, Borstein and Brosnahan are mum about what goes down in their fifth and final go-round (premiering April 14 on Prime Video). Brosnahan won’t even confirm if the pair end their narrative with a pretty crowd-pleasing bow. All she’ll say is this: “Fans will see plenty of the usual shenanigans, miscommunications and divisions—and then linking arms and lighting the world on fire together.”

Instant Chemistry

In a span of two months, Brosnahan, 32, and Borstein, 52, have gone from their dinner salads to the stage. The L.A.-based Borstein is in N.Y.C. during her interview and making a point to see her former co-star perform in her new ‘60s-set play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “I’m purposely not sitting in the front so I don’t freak her out and she doesn’t see my ugly face,” Borstein jokes a few hours before show time. Two days later, Brosnahan reports that her pal paid a post-ovation visit: “It was so sweet of her. I think she liked the play. She said she did, and she’s a bad liar!”

The two exuded that give-and-take chemistry from the very first time they met at a Maisel audition. Brosnahan, a virtual unknown famous only for her doomed arc on House of Cards, had already landed the titular role. Borstein, a vet of Mad TV and Family Guy, was a dear friend of Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and fellow executive producer, Dan Palladino. Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls) had already told Borstein that she envisioned her as Susie, but Borstein plowed through the official process anyway to make sure it was the right fit.

While they read a scene from the pilot that took place in a jail, “I remember being so intimidated because I’d heard she had this relationship with Amy and Dan, and they obviously adore her and she’s so funny in a way that feels effortless,” Brosnahan says. “So even though I had the part, I felt like I was still auditioning.” But Borstein knew the two clicked: “You know it’s going to work when what comes naturally to you comes naturally to them. So, there’s no huge adjustment. We were just rhythmic. It felt like we had rehearsed it.”

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was an acclaimed hit from the get-go, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in its premiere year. (It’s amassed 66 nominations and 20 wins so far.) After being in the business for than 20 years, Borstein finally became a household name and won two Emmys for her breakout performance. New “It Girl” Brosnahan won in her first season and showed her sketch comedy chops hosting Saturday Night Live in 2019. “The success really was lightning in a bottle,” she says.

On-screen, the fact that two females achieve success in a male-dominated world has been a lynchpin of the series. “Amy wanted the love story to be Midge and Susie,” Borstein says. “Comedy is discomfort. People laugh because they’re uncomfortable. Seeing a woman push herself in this world was part of what’s funny. And Susie was the one pushing Midge. If you had a male manager, that’s just what people would have been used to seeing at the time.”

It’s hardly a surprise that the two were verklempt in their final days on the set. “We savored every minute,” Brosnahan says. The sardonic Borstein admits that she couldn’t get through her lines because she was crying so hard. “Everyone laughed and were like, ‘Oh my God, no one in a million years thought it would be Borstein,’” she recalls. “But it felt like a death! People said it was so bittersweet, but to me it was just bitter.”

Common Bonds

The pair also share an interesting bond: Both hail from suburban neighborhoods located on the North shore of Chicago. “It’s a pretty wild coincidence,” Brosnahan says. “Maybe the reason we’ve always gotten along so well is that we are good old-fashioned Midwestern gals at heart.”

Borstein had an inkling of her comedic talent when she started entertaining her family at Passover seders by taking on various voices and characters. Getting paid to make strangers laugh was a significantly more daunting task. “I didn’t think I could make money off it for a very long time.” Her plan B: Writing advertising copy for high-end Barbies. Some of her work, in fact, landed in mid-90s issues of Parade! (She still has her portfolio of ads and the dolls.)

While working at the advertising agency, Borstein became a member of a local comedy troupe and soon performed her material at a festival. A casting director from the Fox sketch show Mad TV spotted her and invited her to audition. She killed. The gig led to voice work as matriarch Lois Griffin on the animated comedy, Family Guy. One day, its head writer, Dan Palladino, tipped her off that his wife was creating a new series for the WB network titled Gilmore Girls. Would she be interested in reading for it?

Borstein landed the role of bubbly chef Sookie St. James. But because of her Fox contract, she had to back out—and the part went to another Chicago comedian, Melissa McCarthy. “It was devastating,” Borstein says. “I thought, Well, that’s my big break and there’s never going to be something cool like that again.” She continued to pop up on TV—including a bit part on a latter-day episode of Friends (“More people have seen that than anything I’ve ever done”). But she eventually got disillusioned with the business and decided to uproot to Barcelona with her young son and daughter. She lived there during the first few seasons of Maisel.

Oh, there’s one more important acting credit on Borstein’s resume: The Lizzy McGuire Movie. Thanks to her role as the hilarious teacher/chaperone in the sunny 2003 comedy, Brosnahan became familiar with her future cohort. Very familiar. “It was a staple of my childhood!” she says. When she wasn’t rewatching the DVD, Brosnahan acted in various school plays “taking it more seriously than my classmates. I was always looking for my next opportunity to perform.”

She studied acting at New York University and vacuumed up one-off roles in series like The Good Wife and Grey’s Anatomy. She singles out her time uttering a few lines in a 2010 episode of Gossip Girl because “it was my first experience being on a set and seeing people do their thing in real time.”

Still, she admits she spent the bulk of her Act I “crying and dying.” In The Blacklist. On House of Cards. She “nearly died” in the 2014 HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge. Even her first movie credit was the 2009 horror movie The Unborn. “I didn’t die in the movie, but everyone just forgot about me,” she jokes.

In conclusion, Brosnahan didn’t have a whisper of a comedy background when she read for Maisel. “I didn’t know if I could do it, but I wanted to do it,” she says. “But even my friend who’s a casting director was like, ‘This is a stretch.’” Certain she bombed her first audition, the actress engaged in retail therapy and gorged on Shake Shack. But she was summoned to L.A. for another round and nailed it despite being “sick as a dog” at the time.

Brosnahan received the good news the same day that she got turned down for a Netflix movie role because, as she recalls, she wasn’t funny enough. She can’t remember the name of flick, only to say, “I felt really good about it and really wanted it.” But, she adds, “It all worked out.”

Their Next Acts

Ever true to their respective characters, the actresses aren’t spending their post-Maisel time kicking back on the couch. “We’re ambitious and we like to do the work,” Brosnahan says. “I think it’s one of the things we really connected over.”

Brosnahan—who lives in New York City with her actor-producer husband, Jason Ralph—took the stage from February through mid-March. “It’s a way for me to try new things and live in a different world,” she says. That’s the plan going forward: “Doing Maisel was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done because I went from having never done comedy to playing a stand-up comedian on television. I was petrified every single day. I think I’m chasing that high now.” (She also develops projects through her production company, Scrap Paper Pictures.)

Borstein is excited about her Amazon comedy special, Corsets & Clown Suits, premiering April 18. The star says it’s a heavily autobiographical look at how she reinvented her career and her life in the aftermath of her divorce. (She was wed to actor Jackson Douglas from 1999 to 2017.) “It examines the difference between who you are and how you are perceived, and should it matter,” she says.

Beyond that, she’s also tinkering with a few screenplays, wants to develop a new animated series and looks forward to perhaps reuniting with the Palladinos for their next undertaking. “There are still some things I want to do,” she says. “But I do feel like I’ve been so f---ing lucky. From Mad TV to Family Guy to Maisel, I’ve done so many quality things that have lasted.”

That list includes the off-screen friendship. “I’m going to have to prove to Alex that I’m in it for the long haul,” Brosnahan says. “She’s one of the smartest and most generous and thoughtful people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. This is forever.”

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Movie I’ve Seen the Most Times

Brosnahan: Amélie [2001, starring Audrey Tautou]

Borstein: Being There [1979] It’s so funny but in a quiet, low-key way.

Last TV Series I Binged

Brosnahan: White Lotus. Jennifer Coolidge is a national treasure and must be protected at all costs.

Borstein: Peaky Blinders. Oh my God, everyone on it is so f---ing hot.

Influential Comedy Album

Brosnahan: A friend gave me a signed copy of [1961’s] Phyllis Diller Laughs. It was one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received.

Borstein: My first album was Richard Pryor’s [1975’s] …Is It Something I Said? The cover is him with burning crosses.

Favorite Vacation Spot

Brosnahan: Santa Fe, New Mexico

Borstein: Ireland

Last Time I Asked for An Autograph or Selfie

Brosnahan: Maybe I had an autograph book when I went to Disney World as a kid? I did ask [onscreen dad] Tony Shalhoub to sign one of my scripts.

Borstein: I took a photo with Cathy Moriarty when I was in New York last year.

Are you a good cook?
Brosnahan: I’m tragically terrible.

Borstein: No. I’m an excellent eater.

A secret about my co-star

Brosnahan: Alex took daily s—ts in her trailer! She was very regular. She announced it every day.

Borstein: She’s an incredible belcher. When she’d burp, the set would shake.