Alex Borstein and Rachel Brosnahan hope that the fifth and final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel makes audiences laugh.
But beyond that, Borstein, who plays Susie Myerson, wants the takeaway of the Emmy-winning Prime Video series to be that shows can have more than just one woman as the main star.
“I hope that this female relationship is something that that kind of stands the test of time and maybe alters TV landscape a little bit, that you can have more than one woman on a show, and they can all be like really well-defined,” Borstein tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s not just Midge. It’s not just Susie. It’s Rose. It’s Shirley. It’s Imogene. It’s Dinah. It’s a massive amount of fully realized characters. I hope that says something to everybody.”
The actress adds that she appreciates that the women in the series aren’t chasing after men, they’re chasing after dreams and putting importance on that.
Brosnahan echoes that statement, reflecting on the time she was on THR’s Comedy Actress Roundtable and realizing she didn’t really know the women around the table because multiple lead actresses don’t usually have the opportunity to work together.
“There’s never room for more than one woman at the table,” Brosnahan tells THR when discussing the interview, which also featured Drew Barrymore, Alison Brie, Tracee Ellis Ross, Debra Messing, Molly Shannon and Frankie Shaw. “We’re all competing against each other all the time, and it was a really special afternoon, getting to listen to all of these women at the top of their game talk about working on these shows.”
The Emmy-winning actress behind Miriam “Midge” Maisel says she remembers looking around the table and hoping she would get to celebrate and be in community with the other actresses from the roundtable onscreen one day. She also points out that Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is one of the few series on television that allows multiple women at the forefront.
“It feels pretty cool to be a part of this new wave of women taking over television, and women of all different shapes and sizes and ages,” she says. “It’s cool and overdue.”
