Why Rachel Brosnahan loved exploring Midge's parenting in final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Rachel Brosnahan knows you think Midge is a bad mother. She also doesn't particularly think you should care.
Over the course of five seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the actress — who scored her fifth Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Midge Maisel, one of the show's 14 this year — had to endure lots of complaints about Midge's parenting skills. While audiences (and reporters) grilled Brosnahan and creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino over Midge's shirking of her maternal duties, they patiently explained that such a criticism was a) sexist and b) not the point of the show.
But in the Prime Video hit's final season, which concluded this past spring, they finally addressed the child-shaped elephant in the room and did it in the most tongue-in-cheek manner — by presenting us a vision of Midge's children in the future: Esther, a neurotic academic, and Ethan, a happy-go-lucky kid who ends up moving to Israel and marrying a girl he meets there.
"I love Esther and I love how she turned out," says Sherman-Palladino. "But the fact that Ethan found such peace in his life, and such happiness in his life, I really enjoyed that."
"It was fun," she adds, speaking about confronting the haters. "Every decision comes with consequences. That's always been our point about Midge. The minute she decided, 'I want to be the best,' that comes with consequences. You can't have it all. I don't care what Sheryl Sandberg tells you. You can lean in all you want. This is a story about a woman discovering her own ambition. The ambition was always going to win."
Prime Video Rachel Brosnahan on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'
For Brosnahan, who brought Midge to life with vigor and grace, it was more about showing the inevitability of some degree of parent-child trauma. "I don't think we're saying she's a bad mother," notes the actress in an interview conducted prior to the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike. "Her kids are saying she's been a bad mother. As someone who doesn't yet have children, I feel like the number one thing I hear from everyone is that no matter what you do, you're gonna f--- the kids up in some way. You're just trying to f--- them up the least. You end up f---ing them up sometimes in the most surprising of ways. So it feels inevitable, no matter how great or bad a parent you are."
Much of Midge's story was about her discovering a new path for herself, one she never even imagined could be possible. The final season chronicled not only her journey to success but also the cost of that and an older Midge taking stock of the trade-offs her life required. Brosnahan enjoyed getting to play in that gray area, which she believes has always been part of Midge's life.
"I think a lot about the set that Midge did in the first season where she's asking herself some questions about what was expected of her versus what she actually wanted," Brosnahan reflects. "Where that line is and how it's changing as her perspective on her limited worldview changes. She asked quite briefly, but it's something I've never forgotten, whether or not every woman is supposed to have kids. One of the questions for her remains, 'How do kids fit into this life that she never envisioned for herself?' I wonder, and maybe she quietly wonders too, whether or not she would've had them if the path that she's on now was the path she initially set out on."
Philippe Antonello/Prime Caroline Aaron, Kevin Pollak, Michael Zegen, Rachel Brosnahan, Marin Hinkle, and Tony Shalhoub on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'
Sherman-Palladino also wanted to stress that no matter which parent is in show business, such a career never makes for an easy home life for kids. She also emphasizes that Ethan and Esther had plenty of support from other members of their family.
"You don't have to look further than the Elvis Presley family to know that show business families and children being raised in that environment, it's tough. Often dysfunctional in a lot of ways," the creator says. "These kids had basically a stay-at-home father. They had a very, very strong father who shouldered the burden. They had two sets of grandparents that always were there for them. They were always loved and with people staring at them and feeding them and shoving cheese in their face."
Brosnahan echoes this, noting that if it were Joel (Michael Zegen) pursuing a career while Midge stayed home with the kids, no one would question the storytelling. It's only an issue because of the way the narrative challenges mid-century gender norms.
"She's doing the best she can with what she has," says Brosnahan, with a laugh. "She doesn't have the most supportive family life all the time, but her kids have four doting grandparents and she has an ex-husband who has really stepped up in a way that feels almost unprecedented for the time. He's given her the space to pursue a career that men at this time are ordinarily pursuing."
"She's the parent who's now less at home, who's struggling with the hours and whether or not she can make it home for bedtime," the actress continues. "But she's put a system into place that supports kids. It's just a system that doesn't necessarily look the way we expect a 1960s mother's system to look. So, yeah her kids are kind of f---ed up. She went into stand-up comedy. You don't do that because you're well-adjusted and normal."
Amazon Studios Rachel Brosnahan on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'
At the end of the day (and the show), Sherman-Palladino reiterates her original argument — the show is not about Midge's children and how well they're cared for. "The story was not really about them, it was about Midge," she concludes. "When she looks back on her life, what's her takeaway from her own decisions? Rather than her talking about it, by showing what the kids were when they grow up, that speaks volumes."
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