by Jason Pham
With “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” season four, the award-winning actor is ready for more, but she isn’t done with the funny business just yet.
Gets the Last Laugh
"We’ve broken up a lot of marriages over the years."
achel Brosnahan has seen a lot in her 13 years in New York. But it wasn’t until recently that she considered herself a real
New Yorker.
A week before Christmas, Brosnahan, 31, received a call from a friend who had swung by her apartment and discovered an unexpected guest in her bathroom: a deceased, water-logged rat who had climbed up her pipes and drowned in her toilet. Traumatized, Brosnahan and her husband, actor Jason Ralph, rushed home to assess the situation. “We felt like the Ghostbusters walking into that apartment,” Brosnahan says over a Zoom call weeks later. Brosnahan, who decided she would be the one to fish out the rat, went into crisis mode: She put back on her black KN95 mask, slapped on some blue surgical gloves, fashioned a pair of “rat chopsticks” from two wooden sticks and got down to business, as her husband recorded the whole operation for TikTok. Of course, it went viral. “People were so mad at me for not showing the rat,” says Brosnahan, who put a GIF from Pixar’s “Ratatouille” over the real dead rat. “What? It was traumatizing. Nobody wants to see that, and I’m not about to put that on anyone’s For You page.”
While Brosnahan considers exterminating a drowned rat from her toilet as her rite of passage as a New Yorker, many would consider her role as Midge in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”— Amazon’s Emmy-winning comedy series about a fast-talking, uproarious housewife-turned-stand-up-comedian from Manhattan’s Upper West Side—as her official New York badge of pride. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which premieres its fourth season on February 18, follows Midge’s career, from her first off-the-cuff standup routine at the Gaslight Cafe in season one to her big break as the opening act for one of America’s most beloved Motown singers (and the fallout that comes next) in season three. While Brosnahan sees some similarities between her and Midge’s careers (“Midge and I both learn by doing”), she admits it took her a lot longer than a couple seasons to become the award-winning actor she is today. “Midge may have had a slightly more overnight success,” she says.
Brosnahan grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She knew she wanted to be an actor from a young age after playing Tree #4 in a kindergarten production of “The Little Red Riding Hood” and downloading illegal audiobooks on Napster that she would listen to in her sleep and make up her own stories to. After she graduated from high school, Brosnahan moved to New York, where she auditioned for small parts in shows like “Gossip Girl” and “The Good Wife” and found a job as a hostess working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour French restaurant in the Flatiron District. One day, while at work, Brosnahan got an audition for what she considered a “make-it-or-break-it” role at the time: a part in a Broadway play. She was faced with a choice. “That was the moment I decided I was going to go all in on the pursuit of this dream and risk the bottom falling out from underneath me,” Brosnahan says. “I respectfully walked out of the shift and was told if I left, I couldn’t come back.”
Brosnahan didn’t get the part. But her career survived. Around that time, she also had an audition for Netflix’s “House of Cards,” the service’s first-ever original series and the first of many streaming shows to follow. She auditioned for the role of Zoe Barnes, an ambitious White House journalist who has an affair with the president. Brosnahan lost the part to Kate Mara, but she impressed the creators enough for them to offer her a five-line character in the pilot named “Call Girl.” What was meant to be one scene was soon expanded to three seasons as Brosnahan—whose character was renamed Rachel Posner, a former prostitute who develops a relationship with the White House Chief of Staff—found herself in her first recurring television role. She credits her expanded part to Michael Kelly, who played Doug Stamper, Rachel’s love interest and eventual murderer. “He called my agent and told them how much he loved working together and knew what kind of impact that could make for a young actor who’s just starting out and desperately trying to get their agent’s attention,” Brosnahan says.
The success of “House of Cards” led Brosnahan to “Manhattan,” a TV drama based on a World War II project of the same name that produced the first nuclear weapons. The show, which introduced Brosnahan to her husband, was canceled after two seasons, at which point Brosnahan decided she was done with television and ready to return to theater. Before she could leave TV completely, however, Brosnahan’s manager had one last script to send her: a show called “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” “I was like, ‘Eh. I don’t want to do any more TV.’ He was like, ‘I really need you to read this script.’ Once I opened it, I couldn’t put it down,” she says. The part was for Miriam “Midge” Maisel, a New York housewife in the 1950s who embarks on a career as a stand-up comic after her husband of four years leaves her for his secretary. Brosnahan—who spent the first decade of her career being told she wasn’t funny—thought she’d be the last person to play a comedian. “I didn’t think in a million years I would get it,” she says. “When someone is like, ‘You have a fair amount of skills, but this isn’t one of them. Maybe you should consider heading in a different direction,’ it becomes a part of the narrative you tell yourself.”
Despite her overpreparation, Brosnahan’s first audition went horribly. “I was tripping over my words. I started over three times, which you’re never supposed to do,” she says. “At a certain point, I was just trying to get the words out of my mouth.” Afterward, Brosnahan treated herself to a chocolate croissant and some retail therapy as she tried to move on. To her shock, she received a call days later telling her that “Maisel” creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, wanted to see her in Los Angeles for a studio test. The call couldn’t come at a worse time. Brosnahan, who was in Vancouver with her husband, was sicker than she’d been her whole life. “In the middle of this current moment, it seems like old hat, but at the time, it felt like the plague,” she says. She consulted with a doctor, who told her she’d risk rupturing her eardrum if she went on a plane. She asked “Maisel” if she could wait a week to recover and was told no and that the show would have to move on without her.
But Brosnahan wasn’t ready to let the opportunity go. She delayed as long as she could for her body to heal before she hopped on a plane, still sick as ever, and flew to L.A. “I was so sweaty. My shoes were a slip-and-slide. I kept having to blot my face with a tissue.
she says. “But something magical happened in that room.” The audition scene was one of the final moments from the pilot, where Midge, wasted on wine and drenched in rain, performs an impromptu stand-up routine at a comedy club hours after her husband, Joel, leaves her. “I was so sick I didn’t have the capacity to care what anyone else thought about what was happening,” Brosnahan says. “I didn’t have the energy to be self-conscious and I’m sure me and all my sloppiness were pretty much just the fuel and fire that scene needed.” The next morning, while alone in a cheap Airbnb she booked at the last minute, Brosnahan received a rejection call for another role she wasn’t funny enough for. “I got a call that morning saying, ‘Unfortunately, that one isn’t going to go your way. They liked what you did. They just didn’t feel like it was very funny,’” she says. Two hours later, she booked “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and learned she would be playing a stand-up comedian. “My mind broke that day. I had an identity crisis,” she says.
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” premiered in March 2017 and went on to become one of Amazon’s most successful original series, winning both the show and Brosnahan Emmys and Golden Globes in 2018. Fame was an adjustment for Brosnahan, however, who found her life turned upside down seemingly overnight. “I don’t think I knew how shy or introverted I was until I felt naked in public,” she says. “I’m not Angelina Jolie. This is the tip of the iceberg. But it made me realize I had been holding onto this old-fashioned idea of what success in this industry can look like in an age of social media and a 24-hour news cycle.” Four seasons into “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and people knowing her name (and how to pronounce it) is something Brosnahan is still getting used to. “I became an actor so I didn’t have to be myself all the time,” she says. “It’s that push–pull of you want people to know you’re a person and maybe something you say can have an impact on somebody, but I also crave what feels like a piece of Hollywood past where you can have a life that’s so private and behind closed doors, and your work speaks for itself.”
Still, despite her worries about living under a microscope and saying the wrong thing, Brosnahan understands that every mistake is an opportunity to learn. She was reminded of this by Midge, who, in season four, must confront the mistakes she made in the previous season after she almost outs singer Shy Baldwin during a stand-up routine and is fired as his opening act. “I believe we all have the capacity to keep growing and changing and that only comes when we take missteps, fall down and figure out how to pick ourselves back up,” Brosnahan says. “That’s something Midge certainly is confronted with and handles in her very Midge way. When we meet her this season, she’s in the first stage of grief, which for her is fury and revenge. But I think, maybe for the first time, she comes to terms with the role she played in her own downfall. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain. She watched her career ambitions fly away on that plane and she’s going to have to rebuild.” Season three also sees Midge recognize her white privilege after Shy, a Black man, reminds her of the racial segregation that was still very much alive in the time of “Maisel.” “This experience of both going on tour with a Black man at that time and a closeted Black man no less was hugely eye-opening for her and quite, let’s be real, late in her life,” Brosnahan says. “This is somebody who’d been shrouded in privilege, and I share that frustration with a lot of viewers that Midge’s progress isn’t linear and sometimes slower than you’d like it to be. But I appreciate that she shows it’s still possible to learn.”
After four seasons of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Brosnahan still has no idea what the end looks like for her or Midge. “I frankly would continue playing this character as long as they give me the opportunity to,” she says. That said, she still has some clues about what Midge’s future looks like, whether the show makes it that far or not. “I’ve asked Amy 2,000 questions and one was, ‘Where do you see Midge ending up in the future?’” she says. “This isn’t how the show ends, but for whatever it’s worth, what she said was she envisions Midge living in a penthouse apartment with 20 poodles one day. She’ll be wildly successful, but she’ll always look back on the day before Joel left her as the happiest day of her life.” While Brosnahan doesn’t know when she’ll retire as Midge, she does know she wants to do something completely different when she is ready to hang up her hat. “I’ve spent the last six years living in this world of comedy. Next I’d like to do something drastically and wildly different,” she says. “So far, I’ve had the privilege of never really living in the same space twice and that’s something I’d love to continue. This show has been an incredible opportunity to stretch as an actor and to learn who I was as a person. I can only hope that whatever that next opportunity is that it offers that same experience in a wildly different direction.”
It’s a frigid Thursday morning in New York as Brosnahan, dressed in a striped beige and gray sweater and thin, wide-rimmed glasses, sips coffee over a Zoom call from the dining nook of her apartment. Behind her is a black-and-white painting she found on Instagram of a naked woman, and by her feet are her two pitbulls wrestling on a patterned carpet in her living room beside a small guitar. It’s two weeks before the premiere of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” season four and Brosnahan, who just came back from a circuit of late-night shows in L.A., is recalling one of the first times she was recognized while at a cabaret show in New York soon after “Maisel” premiered in 2017. “I remember a woman literally falling to her knees and going, ‘Oh my God. I love this show. You are my grandmother,’” Brosnahan says. “She said it had gotten her through a challenging time and that Midge reminded her of her grandmother and how bold, brave and boundary-breaking she was for her time.”
Brosnahan, who based parts of Midge on her own grandmother, has heard a lot of personal stories throughout her years on “Maisel.” She’s heard from parents who are challenged by their children like Midge’s father and mother Abe and Rose. She’s heard from friends who defend their loved ones until the end like Midge’s manager Susie. She’s heard from women who have dumped their shitty husbands like Midge. “We’ve broken up a lot of marriages over the years,” Brosnahan jokes. Whatever story she’s heard, each one is special to each viewer. “You create these fictional people in a vacuum and you put them out into the world and they become more real than you could’ve possibly imagined,” Brosnahan says. “They mean such different things to different people. So many people have points of entry into the show through the characters.”
For Brosnahan, that entry point was Midge and everything she embodies: unapologetically herself, resilient and messy as hell. “Midge is always moving forward. She takes her hits and moves forward with them,” Brosnahan says. “She also doesn’t apologize for being herself, which is something I know I have struggled with and a lot of people, especially women, struggle with.” Brosnahan pauses. “She’s a nut job, but I love her.”
When someone is like, ‘You have a fair amount of skills, but this isn’t one of them. Maybe you should consider heading in a different direction,’ it becomes a part of the narrative you tell yourself.”
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Photographer: Meredith Jenks
Stylist: Thomas Carter Phillips for The Wall Group
Hairstylist: Owen Gould for The Wall Group
Makeup Artist: Lisa Aharon for The Wall Group
Photography Assistant: Daniel Cochran
Dress: Galvan London. Earrings: Melinda Maria Jewelry.
Shoes: Christian Dior. Gloves and Headband: Retrofête.
Dress: Christian Siriano.
Shoes: Manolo Blahnik.
Earrings: Melinda Maria Jewelry.
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RACHEL
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RACHEL
RACHEL
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RACHEL
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RACHEL BROSNAHAN
Funny
Love is
Rachel Brosnahan
My first celebrity crush:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J-14 magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
My first celebrity crush:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J-14 magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
My first celebrity crush:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J-14 magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
My first celebrity crush:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J-14 magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
My first celebrity crush:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J-14 magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
My first celebrity crush:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J-14 magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
My first celebrity crush:
The song that will always make me dance:
The weirdest thing I've heard about myself:
The piece of advice I'd give to my younger self:
The movie or TV show quote I say all the time:
My zodiac sign:
The food I love that everyone else thinks is gross:
My most used emoji:
Limp Bizkit. I had some J magazine that had a spread of pictures you could tear out that included one of Limp Bizkit, and I really liked their tattoos.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston.
That my birthday was April . There was a whole thing for many years where my birthday was permanently April on the internet. I don t know how it happened or who made it up, but it was really difficult for me to change.
Invest in Microsoft.
Am I allowed to say my own? Tits up.
I m a Cancer. I m not huge into astrology, but from what I m told about what it means to be a Cancer, I think it s true. Have a strong connection to home, maybe have a bit of a shell. It takes me a while to let people inside, but once they do, I m fiercely loyal.
Diner grape jelly. It s so good. The ones that come in the little packets and you can put them on diner toast. It tastes not like grapes at all, but it s delicious.
Probably the face palm emoji.
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Dress: Galvan London. Earrings: Melinda Maria Jewelry.
Gloves and Headband: Retrofête.
Suit: Magda Butrym. Jewelry: Jennifer Fisher Jewelry.
Boots: Alexandre Vauthier.
Dress: Christian Siriano. Earrings: Melinda Maria Jewelry.
Amy stopped me at one point and asked me to powder myself.
RACHEL BROSNAHAN
Gets the Last Laugh
by Jason Pham
Gets the Last Laugh
by Jason Pham
RACHEL BROSNAHAN
RACHEL BROSNAHAN
RACHEL BROSNAHAN
