Alex Borstein on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' and Her Musical Comedy Special
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Kousha Navidar: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. We continue with producer picks where All Of It producers come on the show to present some of their favorite segments, and today they're focusing on interviews that celebrate Women's History Month. I'm here with producer Luke Green, who's taking us through some of his favorite segments on this theme that he's produced recently. What's next, Luke?
Luke Green: One of the most beloved TV shows to feature female leads over the last five years was one that I've just been missing so much recently. It's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which wrapped its final season last year after winning a gazillion awards over its five season run. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I'll give a quick synopsis. It sets in 1950s Upper West Side, and it tells the story of Midge Maisel, a housewife or domestic homemaker who gets fed up with her life and is like, "You know what? I'm going to be a stand up comic." She goes and tries to do that, and she meets Susie Myerson, Alex Borstein's character, and the two of them, over the five seasons just try to make it in the entertainment industry. Am I right that you're a fan of the show and Alex Borstein as well, Kousha?
Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. I used to watch Marvellous Mrs Maisel with my now fiance, back then girlfriend. Every week that it came out, we would just binge the whole thing. Alex Borstein is a big influence on my taste in comedy in general. I remember growing up in upstate New York and just watching Mad TV on Comedy Central, and a lot of her characters were just characters that made me laugh really hard and really influenced the ways that I think about comedy and what good comedy is today. Love her. Love Marvellous Mrs Maisel. She's got a new cabaret special that you talked about during this interview. Is that right?
Luke Green: Yes, that's right. Around when the final season of Maisel was coming out last spring, Alex Borstein put out this new comedy special. It's called Corsets & Clown Suits. It's Alex in front of a live audience doing a lot of personal storytelling about her divorce and how she fled to Barcelona to find herself again. There's also a lot of commentary about women's issues through a lot of crass humor and some hilarious cabaret songs.
Alex's parents are in the audience experiencing all this crass humor. You're cringing and laughing at the same time. She joined us to talk about the special, which you can watch on Amazon Prime Video. She also spoke about her character in Mrs. Maisel because the final season was wrapping. She also took listener calls, which was very fun but this is an encore presentation, so you will hear callers talking to Alex during this interview and asking her questions, but we can't actually take your calls live right now. Just want to do a heads up.
Kousha Navidar: I am really excited to listen to this. Here's Alison's conversation with Alex Borstein.
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Alison Stewart: In your special, Alex, you come back to the word 'perception' a bunch of different times. What was it about perception that you wanted to investigate through comedy?
Alex Borstein: I think that women, in particular, spend 90% of their lives worrying about how they are perceived. Maybe they don't exactly have those words to be able to put their finger on it, but that's really it. From what the shape of their bodies should be, from if they're talking too much. It's something that I've always been interested in, always wanted to explore. This show started taking that shape, and that's what it soon became about, just realizing that most of the mistakes I've made in my life were because I lacked perception or did not understand how I was perceived.
Alison Stewart: As you were writing the show, what perceptions of yourself did you have to come to grips with?
Alex Borstein: It's interesting. It's a show about I'm afraid to put myself out there, and yet the show is standing on stage putting yourself out there. It's a little ridiculous in that regard, but the entire thing is standing up and not giving a poop about how you are perceived, on the one hand. I think that's the strange dichotomy, maybe, of being a performer, but maybe it's for all women trying to balance these two things of, "Look at me, don't look at me. I don't want to be looked at, but please look at me."
Over the course of-- this show was in the making for a few years and had different incarnations, and what we finally ended up with was, in my opinion, like this perfect beginning, middle, end. By the time the show is put in front of people, I no longer care about how I'm perceived. It worked. Was it therapy, was it a lesson that I had to learn? Really, it became-- the point of the show was solved to some degree by the end of it.
Alison Stewart: What muscles were you able to flex with while working on this show? Because you trained an improv, you're obviously an actor. We find out you're a fantastic singer. What did you get to flex? What did you get to really work out?
Alex Borstein: The most fun thing about this show is really the control that you have. As an actor, when you're a hired hand, you say the words on the script. Thankfully, Amy Sherman-Palladino is brilliant, so I have no problem saying, but you don't have a say in it. You say what you're told to say. Then when you are just writing, I've written for a lot of shows, you can control those words on the page, but you can't bring it to fruition on the screen.
This is like getting to have this holistic approach as an artist. That's the biggest muscle that I was most happy to flex, where it's you're conceiving it, you're writing it, you're workshopping it, and then you are shooting it, and then you are editing it. It was so much fun to apply everything, to have written it, to have improvised moments with audience members and to get to sing. They say most comedians are really frustrated rock stars. That was always a dream to get to sing. I'm not a trained singer, so it was really just, "Here's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it."
Alison Stewart: You know what, let's play-- I was going to do this a little bit later on, but since you brought up the singing, we found a clean part that we could play on public radio. To set up a little bit, tell our audience a little bit about the two gentlemen who are on stage with you.
Alex Borstein: The show talks about-- it details post-divorce. I wanted to change things up, and I moved to Barcelona. In Barcelona, I met these two guys, Eric Mills and Salva Rey, and we became this trio. We're the oddest of partners, but the three of us met up on a smoke-filled weekend in Amsterdam and started playing music for each other and combining our voices, literally and figuratively. We have this show as a result. It was strange. I started monologuing and storytelling, and they provided a soundtrack.
Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to your interpretation of a Ricky Martin tune, shall we say? Let's listen.
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Alison Stewart: Love the big ending, the big ending. The show, as I said, takes on a lot of topics, important topics. You're very funny about them. You're very serious about them. At one point in the show, you turn to your parents. Your parents are there, and they've been listening to their daughter, and they have these amazing faces because they go from incredibly proud to just mildly horrified, but mostly proud. Did you always know you were going to bring your parents to the show? What was it like to perform some of this material in front of them?
Alex Borstein: Look, my parents have been coming to my shows since day one. They were the only audience. When I was a member of Acme Comedy theater, many weekends, it was just the two of them. They are very used to my antics and my mouth. I always say about my father in particular that it's like that old joke of two Jewish women come out of a restaurant saying, "My God, the food was so terrible." The other one says, "I know, and such small portions" That's exactly how my parents feel about my performing. They wish I was saying something else, but they also wish I had four more hours to say it.
Alison Stewart: My guest is Alex Borstein. We're talking about her new comedy special, Alex Borstein: Corsets & Clown Suits. It's available now on Prime Video. You're very open about going through a divorce with a partner for a very long time. You merge in your 40s, like, "Oh, God, this is the world that I've come out into." It's a little bit of a cliche question, but I'm wondering, did working on the special help you work through some things?
Alex Borstein: Absolutely, the show is deeply personal, it's also wildly fictitious. There's a lot of fun, I had an artistic license, but the very, very real true nugget is I did escape to Barcelona post-divorce to figure out who I wanted to be next and who I was. In doing that, I met these two guys and started doing this show. I was going to spend my time in Barcelona writing a play. I had a play I wanted to write, that's what my goal was, and instead, I ended up doing this.
I did two and a half almost three plays while I was there with The Theater Company, and then this project grew. This project was the therapy. Touring with these guys, finally finding my voice, literally with the singing and figuratively with the story, that really was the working it through. By the time we shot this and by the time Amazon so wonderfully agreed to do it, that hard work was done, that therapy was over. Now, it's just a show and just a story, but really the creation of it, that was the therapy.
Alison Stewart: You come out-- the name of the show is Corsets & Clown Suits, and you come out with a big almost Elizabethan collar but it's ruffly, and then you have the harlequin skirt. Tell us a little bit about that choice that you want us to see you. That's the way we first see you.
Alex Borstein: It's funny, I drew that dress design on a pad of paper while at the TWA hotel in New York. I have the photo of it, that's hilarious. It was based on an old costume. I saw a very old photograph, I want to say it was Clara Bow, but she's in a harlequin pants and something very similar, and that's what I took as inspiration. It really was the idea of feeling trapped and having forced to always don a clown suit. This is who I've been for so long, and if I want to get out there in the world again post-divorce and meet someone, should I try to keep that clown suit on, or should I try to throw a corset on? Do I need to change my ways?
It was the most visible way to tell that story that I could find with doing that. Our wonderful costume designer Stephanie Quick, she brought that little sketch to reality and created that whole outfit. The clown suit that I wear in the beginning backstage was a rented costume she found, and then she altered. It really just was this neat creative meeting of the minds that helped bring that to fruition. I loved that it was just a very blatant symbol and would be visibly, I think, identifiable with marketing and whatnot later on.
Alison Stewart: Talking about identifiable, that's my segue into Susie's cap. Susie, in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, has a certain uniform that she wears. How does that help you as an actor to get into Susie?
Alex Borstein: It really does. Wardrobe is everything. It's like suiting up for a game or to go into battle. Especially for Susie, it was very much like armor. That first season, it was a leather jacket, so she could feel bulletproof. She would wear a belt and suspenders, which was something I asked for because you can't be too careful, and the hat. Right after Amy-- I auditioned and Amy told me I had the part. I sent her photos via text saying, "I want to wear a hat like this. What do you think about this? I want to have keys around my neck. What do you think about that?"
Those were two very specific things that I asked for, and she very wonderfully said yes. Yes, the wardrobe you put it on and you start walking differently, it affects-- Sometimes you can work from the outside in that way.
Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Amelia is calling from Staten Island. Hi, Amelia, you're on the air.
Amelia: Hi, Susie.
Alex Borstein: Hi.
Amelia: Love this show. I can't wait to watch the new show. I actually put it on but I didn't get a chance to watch it yet.
Alex Borstein: Get busy.
Amelia: It must be-- [laughs] I will. I've been waiting with bated breath for Mrs. Maisel to come on. I keep checking to see if a new episode. I was a little disappointed because I thought they would have all the episodes on, but now it's every week I've got to wait until it actually comes on.
Alex Borstein: It's a lesson in moderation.
Alison Stewart: Well it's like old school. I think it's so interesting. For a while, streamers were dropping everything at once. Then, now it's back to like when we were kids, you have to wait. What was the feeling for you going into this season knowing it would be the last time? It's the last one.
Alex Borstein: It was kind of, it was really rough. Show that I had worked on before this was called Getting On and we didn't have the luxury of knowing. We went on hiatus and then we just never came back. It was heartbreaking, it broke my heart. Shortly, thereafter I decided to move to Barcelona and give it all up. I thought, oh, this will be so much more civilized to know. But, God, in a way it's like watching a loved one go slowly [laughs] from an illness instead of getting hit by a truck. It was equally hard. It's a heartbreak either way. It's an end, it's a death, it's a breakup, you grieve.
Alison Stewart: Let's take one last call really quickly. Theresa from Connecticut, got about 35, 40 seconds, Theresa.
Theresa: Yes. Hi. Susie, you are amazing. You're one of my-- I just love the show and I'm devastated because it's coming to an end and I'm just like, "No." I usually sit with my neighbor and we have a glass of wine, and we just watch the series and we're like, "No, this cannot be coming to an end." I just want to say thank you guys so much. You guys did a great job and I'm so fascinated with this show.
Alison Stewart: Theresa, thank you for calling in.
Alex Borstein: I hope long after we're off the air you continue to have that glass of wine with your friend.
Kousha Navidar: That was Alison's conversation with actor Alex Borstein about her comedy special Corsets & Clown Suits, as well as some of the reflections on the success of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and her character Susie Myerson. Luke, what's your final pick going to be, after the break?
Luke Green: Yes. We're going to end my hour by talking about this indie film that made a big splash at the Sundance Film Festival a few years ago. It's a psychological thriller about a Senegalese immigrant working as a nanny in New York. We'll speak to the movies director Nikyatu Jusu.
Kousha Navidar: That'll be great. You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar here with Luke Green. We'll be right back after a quick break.
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