[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Fans of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, [unintelligible 00:00:14] Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson, Midge Maisels' feisty and foul-mouthed talent manager. Susie truly has a way with words and Borstein delivers these one-liners with Gusto.

Midge: What are you doing here?

Susie: What am I-- You invited me to the stupid party what?

Midge: No, I mean on the elevator. You're not leaving, are you?

Susie: No, I've been riding this thing up and down for an hour waiting for you to float in here and you're golden f***king horse. You got a pretty loose concept of time lady. I'm going to the drugstore to see if there's someone there who can help me more than you, like a blind new baby with no arms.

Midge: I completely lost my time, I miss my Pastels class.

Susie: Hmm, I want to take Pastels class.

Midge: Really?

Susie: No, I don't give a f**k about Pastel's class. Do you hear yourself? Who has a day like that?

Midge: You're great at what you do.

Susie: Half of them respect me maybe, the other half want to get in your pants.

Midge: Stop.

Susie: It's going to happen. I mean, look at you, it's like a dollop of whipped cream grew a head. Why am I touching this child? Why is this child touching me? Why is his hand sticky? Why is your hand sticky? Where's his hand band that is now currently very sticky?

Alison Stewart: Their entire YouTube clip is devoted to Susie's one-liners. The show is currently airing in its fifth and final season and there's an interesting new development in Susie's character that's been teased in the episodes that have dropped. That's not the only place you can catch Alex, she has a new comedy variety special Corsets & Clown Suits, and when you watch it, you think, "Hey, that kind of looks familiar." The show is staged in the same theater where the fictional Midge Maisel performs her act at the Cabaret Club. The Borstein's show discusses some very real subjects; sex, divorce, abortion, plus she shows off her vocal skills with some musical numbers. Alex Borstein's Corsets & Clown Suits is streaming now on Prime Video, as is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Alex, welcome.

Alex Borstein: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Hello. Listeners, Alex has kindly agreed to take calls. Do you watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Are you a fan of Alex and her character Susie? Give us a ring. Tell us why. Or maybe you have a question about the character or about the show. 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692. You can reach out on social media @allofitwnyc, or maybe you've seen her special, have some questions about that. Or maybe you're a family guy watcher and have questions about her voice work as low as 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNCY. 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 is 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 perceived, it worked. Was it therapy, was it a lesson that I had to learn, but 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 while working on the show because you're trained in 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 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. Yes, 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 like a trained singer, so it was really just, "Here's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it."

Alison Stewart: 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, 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, where the artist of partners. 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, and 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.

[music]

[foreign language]

Alison Stewart: Love the big ending, the big ending. The show, as I said, takes on a lot of 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. They've been listening to their daughter and they have these amazing faces because they go from incredibly proud to like just mildly horrified, with them mostly proud.

Alex Borstein: Yes.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Did you always know you were going to bring your parents to this 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," and the other one says, "I know, in 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 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, had an artistic license, but the very, very real true nugget is I did kind of escaped 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. Instead, I ended up doing this. I did two and a half, almost three plays while I was there with a theatre company and then this project grew.

This project it was the therapy like. 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 kind of over. Now it's just a show and just a story but really the creation of it that was the therapy.

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Corsets & Clown Suit, you come out with a big, almost Elizabethton collar, but it's kind of roughly, and then you have the Harlequin skirt. Tell us a little bit about that choice that you want us to see. That's the way we first see you.

Alex Borstein: It's funny. I drew that dress design on a pad of paper, while the TWA Hotel in New York. I have a photo of it. It'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. That's what I took his 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 kind of 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 but it really just was this neat, creative meeting of the minds that helped bring that to fruition but 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. [chuckles] 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 it because you can't be too careful. The hat that right after 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 the 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: [laughs] I will. I've been waiting with bated breath for Mrs. Maisel to come on. I keep checking to see for new episode. I was a little disappointed because I thought I would have all the episodes gone but now it's like every week I got to wait till 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 late when we were kids, you have to wait.

Alex Borstein: I love it.

Alison Stewart: The anticipation is part. You do like that?

Alex Borstein: I love it. I do. I love it took us 10 months to make these episodes. It takes so much and to have-- It's like baking a pie and having someone not even chew it. You really want people to save her every bite and take it slow. I think you miss some things, especially that little subtleties if you do it all in a row, it becomes a blur. For me anyway, as a viewer.

Alison Stewart: 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 really rough. Shows 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." God in a way, it's like watching a loved one, go slowly 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: Or you can look back at it and it's like, "We just made something great."

Alex Borstein: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: We started it, we did it and we finished it.

Alex Borstein: I'm always negative. I like to see [inaudible 00:16:10] first.

Alison Stewart: Good. [laughs] Let's talk to Pat from Montclair. Hi, Pat. You're on with Alex Borstein.

Pat: Hi, how are you? I just wanted to say, I think when you won the Emmy, that was the most moving acceptance speech I have ever heard. I've wanted to get a t-shirt to say, ladies step out a line and with your name in quotes. It was just beautiful.

Alex Borstein: Thank you. I've been working on some stuff to do that, wanting it to be the right item and the right cause where all the proceeds would go to. We are working on that. I think what I have is a prototype for a pair of shoes, actually a pair of sneakers that say step out of line ladies, and they're very cool. That's what I'm working on right now.

Alison Stewart: Wow. Match and it probably would go to one of the causes you care about.

Alex Borstein: Yes, it would not be-- [crosstalk] for me, it will be refugees and abortion and something that unfortunately will always need funding.

Alison Stewart: It's really interesting in the new season of Maisel-- I'm not giving anything [unintelligible 00:17:24] has already dropped, it flashes forward. We learned that Midge has become just a superstar. There's a great fake 60 Minutes interview and looking back on her life, and there's this line dropped. I'm not sure we've gotten there yet. I think I've watched five. That's Midge and Susie are no longer close.

Alex Borstein: Midge and Susie or Smidge as we like to refer to ourselves, it's the central romance of the show. This is a love story. The show is no different than any other love story, except it's platonic. It made me even stronger for that reason. Like any relationship, there are high highs and very low lows, and Season 5 will take you to both, and because there's some time we play with time, it's infinite in many ways, which I really like.

Alison Stewart: Let's take line seven. Robert is calling in from Bergen County, New Jersey. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hi. How are you guys doing? I just wanted to call and say thank you, Alex. I was lucky enough to shoot some background stuff with you guys on the show a couple of times. I have developed an appreciation for corn dogs. We were shooting a scene in Central Park and I think you got behind the camera and noticed I was cheating. I was not eating the corn dogs. We did this scene about six times and it was a lot of fun.

Alex Borstein: Well, I think I was probably jealous. I probably would have given anything to have a corn dog at that moment.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Robert was saying he was saying earlier that he really appreciated your attention to detail in your work. Is that something that you're aware of or did you not really realize that about yourself? He is actually was able to observe that about you?

Alex Borstein: No. I think it's one of my faults I think. I'm very anal and I'm very uptight about things and like continuity and things matching. If I'm smoking a cigarette and it's stashed this long, we'd have to stop so I can get the cigarette the same length. I'm a nosy busybody. I'll notice everyone else's detail or if something's not right or holding their person the other hand or something. I should just come down and focus on my lines but--

Alison Stewart: It's okay. Let's take one last call really quickly. Theresa from Connecticut, got about 35-40 seconds, Theresa.

Theresa: Hi, Susie. You are amazing. You're like one of my-- I just love the show. 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 watched the series and we're like, "No, it's going to be coming to an end." I just want to say thank you guys so much. You guys did a great job. I'm so fascinated with the 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, once a week in our honor, raise a glass and say tits up.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Alex Borstein. The name of the special is Alex Borstein: Corsets & Clown Suits. It's available on Prime Video as is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Alex, thanks for being with us.

Alex Borstein: Thank you for having me.

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