(Editor’s note: This post contains spoilers for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, including the series finale.)
The latest season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” saw many leaps into the future that surprised fans, but perhaps none were as shocking as when Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) visited Joel (Michael Zegen)… in prison.
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It was a stunning turn for the actors as well.
“I don’t like knowing anything upfront,” Zegen said during an IndieWire’s Awards Spotlight conversation with Brosnahan. “I like reading the episodes and taking them from there.”
“I was always trying to tell you secrets!” Brosnahan chimes in with a laugh. “But I was bursting with some secrets and I needed to tell someone — and you’re my person and you wouldn’t hear it half the time.”
Zegen eventually learned of Joel’s dark and somewhat mysterious future thanks to his bean-spilling makeup artist, but the episode 5 scene remains the most memorable for the two based on what viewers no See.
“There was actually an alternate ending to that scene, which was fair horny Midge and Joel in jail,” Brosnahan said. “It was one of the most exciting scenes we’ve ever shot. I wonder why he didn’t make it. They were talking about boning in a trailer, right?
“He was saying he liked to dive across the table and do all kinds of things,” Zegen said.
“So we know that, even though it didn’t make the final cut, there was a version where they were still horny for each other right up to the end,” Brosnahan concluded, putting the most positive spin imaginable on prison coitus. .
As exes, sometimes friends, co-parents and occasionally lovers, the two’s on-screen relationship spanned the five-season gamut of the Prime Video Emmy-winning series, so going into the final season the actors wondered where they would end up. things for the duo.
“I had a conversation with Amy when I asked her what was going to happen over the course of the show,” Brosnahan said. “He told me they would never formally end up together — that there would always be a lot of love there, they would always be a part of each other’s lives, but they would never be on exactly the same page at the same time ever again. And that day, when Midge ends up in her penthouse, she will always remember the day before Joel left her as the happiest day of her life.
All together now: Awww.
But fans know that Ms. Maisel made things work with her true love after all — it just wasn’t what she initially suspected. In the final episode of the series, Midge finally scores her big break by doing an unauthorized live stand up on “The Gordon Ford Show,” with his family, including Joel, in the studio audience. The scene was very art-imitate-life in the way he mirrored the experience on set.
“I’ve been sent a lot of videos of that last moment since the show aired as well, and it seems to have been felt,” Brosnahan said. “Amy kept asking for another take and another take of that last moment. And I was like, ‘What does he need? What’s wrong?’ And then we realized it was hard to call that final cut, print, check and call the series.
“It was difficult,” Zegen said. “Rachel had to do the same set over and over, all week, getting the writers’ reaction, getting the audience’s reaction. When the last “cut, print, this is a wrap” was said confetti fell, everyone was hugging, champagne was being passed around, it was four in the morning I think. It was tough but it was beautiful.”
Their long-running series may now officially be behind them after a glamorous all-around finale, but some fans are still looking for clues about the duo’s happily ever after status.
“A group of people asked me about the scene, the little clip with you at the end (when) you move the picture of us from the wedding,” Zegen said. “They said, ‘Does this mean they’re back together?’ …But just because you showed it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re back together. Only, there’s a lot of love there. I don’t know, we’ll find out on reboot.
Your move, Prime Video.
Watch the full Awards Spotlight conversation between Brosnahan and Zegen above.
