For those of us missing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — and hey, who isn’t?! — the creators of the Amazon Prime series have given us a remarkable gift: Making Maisel Marvelous, an interactive website, which was created as part of the show’s Emmy Award campaign (it is nominated for a whopping 21 awards!). The site provides an amazing behind-the-scenes experience of season three, complete with commentary.
The interactive site is completely worth exploring in its entirety. You’ll get to see the costume sketches from the season’s memorable outfits (seriously, I want everything Midge is wearing); listen to the crew talk about composing the original music for Shy Baldwin; and discover some surprising facts about season three (for example, that tarmac in the last, unforgettable scene was computer generated!).
I especially loved reading about how production designer Bill Groom being falling in love with the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, where they shot Midge’s and Shy’s Florida stint. Groom writes about being inspired by architect Morris Lapidus, who designed the hotel in the 50s, and this iconic quote attributed to the Jewish creator, whose family fled the pogroms in Russia to make a new home in the US when he was an infant: “If you create the stage setting and it’s grand, everyone who enters will play their part.” Groom definitely has created a grand stage for Maisel and her crew.
Billed as an “immersive, one-of-a-kind journey,” the site takes us through what it takes to bring this incredibly popular period series to life — which, given the current lack of new Maisel episodes, is almost certainly the next best thing.
As for season four, it is most certainly coming — we just don’t know when. The truth is, the show’s creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Dan Palladino, are, like all of us, dreading the return to work during Covid times, especially before there’s a vaccine.
“We’re scared to death, and we don’t quite know what to do,” Dan Palladino told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re all kind of in the same boat. I think it’s going to be very, very daunting.”
The good news is that the plot points for season four have pretty much been decided already: “We know what happens in season four — we could write it, but none of us really knows when we’re going to be producing these things,” Palladino said.
Still, the couple has confirmed that season four will take place right after the end of season three when the titular Midge Maisel suffered a pretty huuuge setback to her career (no spoilers). The new season will show her picking up the pieces.
And with seasons two and three featuring visits to Jewish vacation sites like the Catskills and Miami, I’m still holding out hope that season four will include a visit to the Holy Land! Perhaps not IRL for cast and crew, though — pandemic travel being what it is — but as we’ve learned from this delightful interactive site, the Mrs. Maisel crew is pretty great at making magical things happen inside their studios.
The Primetime Emmy Awards are slated for Sept. 20 — yep, that’s directly following the second day of Rosh Hashanah! — and we’re hoping to have many mazels for the Maisel cast and crew.
