Rachel Brosnahan And Alex Borstein Break Down Midge And Susie’s Fallout In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Things got ugly.
Serious spoilers for Season 5, Episode 6 – “The Testi-Rostial” – of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are ahead. If you are not caught up, you can stream Seasons 1 through 5 with an Amazon Prime subscription, as the final episodes drop every Friday on the 2023 TV schedule.
Two things were clearly inevitable in the early episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s fifth and final season: Midge would become incredibly famous, and she and her manager Susie were bound to have a major, and catastrophic fallout. Well, the impending fight happened in Episode 6, and it was heartbreaking. So, I had to ask the actors behind the iconic friends, Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein, about this pivotal scene, and what it was like to film the fight in the synagogue.
In the episode “The Testi-Roastial” it’s slowly revealed just how successful Susie Myerson became through a roast of her career. However, a guest that is notably missing is Midge, her first, and most successful client.
As the episode goes on it’s revealed that Joel found out about Susie selling Midge to the mob. So, after Joel struck a deal, and when he was arrested in a synagogue decades later, our protagonist found out how her manager betrayed her. What came next was a brutal and tragic fight. Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Mrs. Maisel, explained that filming that scene was really tough, telling us:
Not only was this fight hard to watch on its own, when you consider the weight of the history behind it, it becomes even more difficult to take in. A fallout had been building since Susie made a deal with the mobsters in Season 3, then when the fight actually happened decades later when Susie, Joel and Midge were much older it only added to the impact, because we immediately realized our main character was left in the dark for decades.
With how intense their fight was, I can only imagine how hard it was for Borstein and Brosnahan to film. One part of the scene that the Susie actress mentioned as an element that snuck up on them was where the sequence falls within the season, because it’s right in the middle of Season 5. The Emmy winner said:
Adding a bit of context as to why this scene was so difficult for the two Emmy winners to shoot, recalling the history the characters have, and the deep love they share, Brosnahan explained:
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She is totally right, Midge and Susie’s relationship is the great “love story” of this show, and seeing them break up was heartbreaking. However, this episode also ended on a high note, as the ladies had a beautiful and totally on-brand reunion, where they finally made up, and Midge forgave Susie. Bringing the story full circle.
This episode was an emotional rollercoaster, to put it lightly, and we finally saw an inevitable fight that had been percolating for seasons. The actresses handled the sequence beautifully, and they proved, once again, why The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is one of the best shows on Amazon Prime. It gets you invested in a character’s journey, rips it away, and brings everything back around with a beautiful solution, all thanks to great writing and these two amazing performers.
Riley Utley is the Weekend Editor at CinemaBlend. She has written for national publications as well as daily and alt-weekly newspapers in Spokane, Washington, Syracuse, New York and Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated with her master’s degree in arts journalism and communications from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Since joining the CB team she has covered numerous TV shows and movies -- including her personal favorite shows Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She also has followed and consistently written about everything from Taylor Swift to Fire Country, and she's enjoyed every second of it.