Marvelous! Mad!

The new show from the creator of Gilmore Girls is about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakout.

- Lisa Chase

The first thing you observe on Rachel Brosnahan’s Twitter page is a picture of Elisabeth Moss as Mad Men’s Peggy Olson. It’s not just any picture of Peggy: It’s Peggy in cool dark shades, a cigarette dangling from her lip, and carrying something—a mock-up for an ad campaign? (in fact, it’s Roger’s illustration of “an octopus pleasuring a lady”)—in such a way that it looks like she’s slinging a gun.

“It’s just one of the most badass pictures that I’ve seen of her. Like, fuck the world,” says Brosnahan, the 27-year-old actress you may know as the prostitute Rachel on House of Cards. Brosnahan is currently killing it as Miriam “Midge” Maisel; she’s the star of writer-director Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new series streaming on Amazon, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Amazon liked what it saw in the pilot so much that the studio ordered two full seasons. (This never happens, by the way.)

The show is both intimate and big, screwball and transgressive. That it succeeds on all levels is a testament to Sherman-Palladino’s immense talents, and those of her husband, Daniel Palladino; the show’s writers; and the cast. And let’s not forget the crew, many of whom were Vinyl alums, “a bunch of brilliant, creatively minded people who were suddenly wandering the streets of New York…when HBO, thank God, decided to do the angelof-death thing” and cancel that 2016 series, Sherman-Palladino says with grateful glee.