Rachel Brosnahan and Tony Shalhoub have revealed how they felt about returning to work on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last year.
Production on season four was pushed back by the coronavirus pandemic but the episodes are now complete and will drop this Friday on Amazon Prime.
During a new interview Rachel, 31, gushed how ‘incredible’ it was to have ‘the band back together’ while Tony, 68, noted to People that it was also ‘daunting.’
Side by side: Rachel Brosnahan and Tony Shalhoub have revealed how they felt about returning to work on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last summer
Rachel plays Midge Maisel, a 1960s housewife whose problems with her cheating husband help propel her into a whirlwind career as a stand-up comic.
Her storyline is evidently inspired by the real-life pioneering women comedians of the era such as Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers.
Tony plays her father Abe and Marin Hinkle plays Midge’s mother Rose, amid a sterling cast that includes Family Guy icon Alex Borstein.
In her new interview Rachel remembered how elated she was when she and her colleagues were able to resume filming last year.
Prepared: Rachel was snapped on set with an umbrella that doubled as a HEPA filter; she and Tony are pictured at the shoot in New York last April
‘There was nothing like getting the band back together again and shooting the show after so long away. It was incredible,’ she dished.
Tony agreed that returning to the shoot was ‘exciting’ but added: ‘That first day was a little daunting because we were thrilled to be kind of back in the clothes and back in these gorgeous sets, and then we actually had to speak the words.’
He confessed: ‘And very honestly, we all felt very rusty, like: “Wait a minute. What is the voice of this character? What is the physicality of this?”‘
Navigating the COVID-19 regulations was also an involved task, as became clear when Rachel was snapped on set with an umbrella that doubled as a HEPA filter.
Cheers: Rachel plays Midge Maisel, a rising stand-up comic in the 1960s, while Tony has a major supporting role as her father Abe
‘We realized during the first day that I couldn’t really put a mask on because it was lifting the lace from my wig around my ears, and so our amazing COVID team instantly got to work,’ Rachel told People recently.
‘They were like little mad scientists and they create the, could have been more creatively named Cobrella, that has made its way into a thousand memes and photographs. [It] had a little HEPA filter on top. I mean, it worked.’
Meanwhile Tony is not the only actor to have been candid about the difficulty of returning to his profession after a pandemic-induced break.
Meryl Streep also recently confessed that she found herself feeling rusty at acting while shooting Don’t Look Up after her self-isolation.
Getting back into it: Tony confessed that ‘very honestly, we all felt very rusty, like: “Wait a minute. What is the voice of this character? What is the physicality of this?”‘
The 72-year-old, who plays a parody of Donald Trump in the disaster comedy, made the revelation at an Entertainment Weekly roundtable plugging the film.
‘I found it really hard, really, really hard because I was aware that my character was funny. I didn’t feel funny in the lockdown,’ said Meryl.
The three-time Oscar winner has previously starred in such iconic comedies as Postcards From The Edge and The Devil Wears Prada.
Common experience: Meryl Streep also confessed that she found herself feeling rusty at acting while shooting Don’t Look Up whose New York premiere she is pictured at
Don’t Look Up was shot from November 2020 through February 2021, having been delayed by the coronavirus lockdowns.
The Sophie’s Choice star commuted to the set from self-isolation at her home in the Berkshires ‘so that’s about a three-hour drive from Boston.’
She noted that ‘when I would come in to shoot my stuff, I’d get in my car, put my dog in there, drive, get out of the car and hadn’t spoken to anybody in three weeks.’
Commander in chief: The 72-year-old, who plays a parody of Donald Trump in the disaster comedy (pictured), made the revelation to Entertainment Weekly
Meryl recalled having to ‘walk into the stadium in Worcester, put on the wig and put on the nails and put on the face and the suit, and the thing, walk up to the Jumbotron, there’s my face 40 feet tall, and make a speech to all these people.’
The Mamma Mia! star said: ‘And I just, I lost it. I forgot how to act, I forgot what I was about or, what am I? I’m this thing all put together of little component parts. And it sort of dismantles your humanity, to be isolated like that.’
She also ‘found it really, really difficult’ initially to improvise with her co-stars because everyone’s face was obscured by a mask.
