‘Étoile' cast and creators on fast-talking, mean drunks, and what they learned from ‘Gilmore Girls'
'I was 4 and handed a tutu — that's the gateway drug!'
That's how Amy Sherman-Palladino explained her introduction to the world of ballet, which she celebrates in her new Prime Video comedy series, Étoile, cocreated with her husband, Daniel Palladino.
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'I trained as a dancer all the way until becoming a writer. I do think that if you love something like dancing, it gets inside of you. It affects everything about you. And if you love it, it never quite leaves you.'
The creator-writer-directors shared insights into their creative process alongside their stars at Tuesday night's FYC event for their Prime Video comedy, alongside stars Luke Kirby (who plays Jack), Gideon Glick (Tobias), Ivan du Pontavice (Gabin), David Alvarez (Gael), Yanic Truesdale (Raphael), Simon Callow (Crispin Shamblee), and Tais Vinolo (Mishi). (Paris-based stars Charlotte Gainsbourg [Genevieve] and Lou de Laage [Cheyenne] were unable to attend. 'They're home in France being French,' quipped Kirby.)
Fans of the Palladino-verse know that this series isn't the couple's first foray into dancing — Bunheads ran for one season in 2012. 'That was a small taste of what it was like to write and incorporate dance into drama and use physicality to move story along,' said Sherman-Palladino. 'Ten years later, I'm still angry that it doesn't exist — so vengeance will be mine!'
Daniel Palladino admitted that casting for the show was a bit of a challenge, given their need for actors who could dance, dancers who could act — not to mention the ability to speak both French and English. 'We tend to write parts for which there is one actor out there,' he said. 'There was one Lorelai Gilmore. There was one Midge Maisel.'
But when it came to Etoile: 'We knew we wanted Luke to be in it — he had no choice,' said Sherman-Palladino, calling him their 'hostage.'
'Call the police,' joked Kirby. 'I'm not a strong swimmer.'
Kirby had worked with the Palladinos before on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, starring alongside Rachel Brosnahan as tortured comedian Lenny Bruce. 'I thought [Jack] was going to be a really cool guy,' said Kirby. 'And I was really looking forward to that. Turns out that the world has other plans for him.'
Quipped Sherman-Palladino, 'You already played Lenny Bruce — you played the coolest guy!'
Glick said he found his way into the eccentric choreographer Tobias through the writing. 'Tobias is someone who sees the world very clearly in his head, but is not able to communicate that to anybody,' he said. 'But when it's not the way he sees it, he's inherently sick.' He also credited choreographer Margueritte Derricks for inspiration. 'The way she goes through all of the dancers and tracks them like an animal, I stole from that her,' he says.
Sherman-Palladino took every opportunity to praise the rest of the assembled cast as well — du Pontavice ('he takes it so much to heart'), Vinolo ('she plays a mean drunk'), and Callow ('we couldn't stop watching him').
Truesdale, who had worked with the Palladinos for seven years on Gilmore Girls, said they're the same 'vibrant, creative, crazy, caring, passionate couple' — but now they're more grounded. 'We look at each other, and very few words are needed,' he said.
'When we were doing Gilmore Girls, it was a runaway train,' recalled Sherman-Palladino. 'It was my first hour-long. The only thing I knew about an hour-long is, I guess, there's more pages in a script. I just wrote what I wrote, but more. I knew what I wanted, but I'd never done it before. So people didn't think I knew what I wanted. So I was in a weird panic; there was just a lot of panic going on. We never had the time to sit and reflect. We never had the time to work in a way that was thoughtful and contemplative and sit and laugh as friends, because we were all just literally throwing up, constantly. [Now] it's nice to be able to work in a thoughtful, calm way, and to be able to be people together. It was like working with him for the first time. And now we could enjoy it.'
And as a summa cum laude graduate of Palladino University, Truesdale recalled the advice he shared early on with the rest of the cast. 'The first thing I told everybody at the table read was, 'Get ready,'' he said. 'The first note you're going to get over and over is: 'Faster.''
The irony is, though, the French actors actually talked too quickly — even for the Palladinos.
'The French naturally talk fast, so fast that we had to slow them down sometimes, which was shocking to our Gilmore people that were around us,' said Palladino.
'They don't believe in punctuation. There's no stopping a sentence,' said Sherman-Palladino. 'I believe all the actors lied to us at every point. I don't think they said anything that we wrote.'
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