After seasons of fans pining for characters Miriam Maisel (played by Rachel Brosnahan) and Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) to finally cut through the sexual tension and act on their obvious attraction to one another, it happened. But as heated and exciting as that rendezvous was, it wasn’t the Midge and Lenny moment that left audiences reeling. That moment came days later at the comedian’s historic Carnegie Hall concert where Lenny invited Midge onto the iconic stage to reprimand the budding comic for turning down gigs. This brutal dressing down on the hallowed stage wound up being exactly what Midge needed to close out this season of the Prime Video series readying everyone for the fifth (and final) season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
“Everyone else on the show has a relationship with Midge that’s established in a way that’s more familial, Lenny and Midge don’t really have that,” Kirby said. “Those are the people that can call you out in some ways because they don’t have the same kind of dog in the fight.”
Brosnahan, Kirby, and series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, dissect the tense Carnegie Hall argument for Variety‘s Making A Scene, presented by HBO.
“This particular confrontation was really important for the two of them,” Brosnahan said. “Lenny doesn’t apologize for who he is and that’s the piece that she took away as she’s forging this new path for herself, but he’s that grounding force in that moment where he says ‘Yeah, but you have to understand that there’s also stuff that you have to do.’”
Sherman-Palladino talked about securing the filming location at Carnegie Hall during the pandemic. “Getting Carnegie Hall itself was sadly not that hard because we were in the middle of a pandemic and nobody was going into Carnegie Hall,” the showrunner explained. “I think it was symbolic of our entire season last year which was trying to figure out how to do this show and creatively keep it on all levels, visually and performance-wise, on the same level that all the other seasons were.”
On the show’s stand-up scenes, Sherman-Palladino had high praises for Brosnahan and Kirby. “Everything that I love about stand-up is what these two actors are personifying when they get up there and take control,” Sherman-Palladino said. “It’s the ballsiest thing you can do, I find myself forgetting how hard what they’re doing is, and it’s very special.”
As for what this exchange means for Midge’s future, “She’s got to really go for it, she’s got to get out of her own way and see how she’s going to break through to that final moment where she becomes star, “Sherman-Palladino explained. “The fight with her and Lenny was to sort of knock her head into a sense of, ‘This could all go away and I could turn around tomorrow and my opportunity was gone and I missed it!’”
So what’s next and how will Midge be moving “forward,” keep your eyes on the small screen. “TV was becoming very big. You could break huge on TV, where it would take you a lot longer going on the club circuit. You go on TV, everybody sees you, you’re a star the next day. It’s setting us up for where we need to take her for the last season,” the creator teased.
Check out the full video above.