Marin Hinkle knows when she’s got something special on her hands. As a mainstay of “Once and Again” and “Two Men and a Half Men” she’s well aware of the joys of a well-made program. To say she’s struck gold for a third time is an understatement. As Rose Weissman, she’s the mother of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,“ a woman who is torn between supporting her daughter’s career aspirations and the societal pressures of upper-class Manhattan in the 1950s. Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino found an unexpected way to flesh out Rose Emmy-winning show’s second season so it’s no surprise Hinkle says the experience is “thrilling.”
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“I’m a woman of a certain age, I’m in my mid-life, and definitely I’ve faced what we all read about in the press which is a lack of sometimes unique and interesting roles for someone of my age,” Hinkle admits. “And so, when I got the job originally, I was, of course, thrilled that the way Amy writes, and Amy and Dan [Palladino] created this extraordinary character, I knew that she was going to be unique. I think [they described] the entrance of my character in the pilot as she enters the room as if in an MGM musical or something in a satin robe with a feather boa. So I thought, “O.K., right there, that’s much more interesting than pretty much all the characters I’ve played.” so I was really fortunate that first season to even be so lucky as to be Rose.”
The second season saw Rose leave her husband Abe Weissman (Tony Shalhoub) and family to escape to Paris, France. Rose had lived there in her youth and her character almost completely transforms having escaped the pressured environs of her long Upper West Side existence. She’s open, carefree and passionate about the arts.
“It was a great contradiction to what I thought Rose was,” Hinkle says. “You’ve just seen her spread her wings in a very different direction. Kind of in a more traditional feminist way.”
Hinkle, who is an Emmy contender for the Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series category, could relate to Rose’s transformation having witnessed her own mom return to law school after raising her own children. Especially when – spoiler alert – Rose makes the surprise decision to return home.
“[My mother] ended up pursuing a more independent streak and professional life, but then there were all these moments in my later life where you got a sense of her questioning whether or not that was what she wanted,” Hinkle says. “So it was a struggle, right? Which is the same struggle I face as a mother too. I’m off in New York shooting this series but the truth is I have a child that’s being raised in this other city, Los Angeles. So, how do I balance that? And that’s kind of the way I thought about it with Rose. It’s not a straight line. You go forward and then you go around in a circle and you come back to where you feel comfortable, and then you move around again. That’s how I thought about it, it’s like making this little circle rather than going straight.”
After the acclaim of the first season, the Palladinos stretched their creative wings in the second time around. One of the more memorable moments was an extended shot of the family arriving at their Catskills summer retreat. The wide shot encompassed the entire family getting out of their car, getting their things and hilariously bickering with each other (something the Maisels do lovingly) without a single cut. Hinkle says the script was pretty descriptive and it was just as difficult to pull it off as it looked.
“Dan was directing that episode, so they set the camera on a dock,” Hinkle says. “Ironically, by the way, the dock was so old at that Catskills place that it actually fell into the water. Luckily, the camera did not completely fall in, but he set the camera out there, we have extraordinary cinematographers and they did choreograph that pretty high detail, and then we rehearsed it maybe seven, eight, nine times [and] that took a number of hours. Then we did all the finishing touches, and I don’t think we did [shot[ that many times. Maybe five or six.”
Hinkle continues, “[That scene was so] theatrically exciting and inspiring, and it reminds me of being on a stage because you really let go and suddenly you are empowered as an actor to do something that allows you to forget the camera, which doesn’t happen that often in television, right? Normally those cameras are right in front of you and you’re always aware ‘O.K, I’m doing this for film’ but you totally forget that and you really feel like you are in the moment and you’ve gone back in time.”
In Hinkle’s eyes, both Palladinos are choreographers that are directing “Maisel” like a musical without any of the music. She adds, “It’s that detailed that you find out ‘Oh, it’s going to be three knocks on the door before you come down and the tomato juice is going to have to be three-quarters of the glass full because it looks best that way.’ All those details. They’re so good at that.”
Asked about one word that might describe season three, currently in production, Hinkle took a moment to ponder and then replied, “surprising.”
“I will say this, Jane Lynch is a deeper and richer part of our series now, and then they’ve brought in Sterling k. Brown and he is a very integral part to our season,” Hinkle adds. “They’ve made the whole scope of our show grander with these additional characters, and it’s exciting for me to see growth and other parts of [characters] that I would never have predicted were going to that direction. The tentacles are going to get deeper, richer, and more widespread, which is what happened in the second season two but it just continues to grow. It’s like the octopus’ arms, legs, whatever you want to call them, just grow longer and longer. Isn’t that funny? One leg is farther right than the left leg that’s way over in the other direction and that’s really exciting I think.”
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” season two is available on Amazon Prime Video.