Latest news with #Sherman-Palladino
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Étoile' creators say cinematographer M. David Mullen was their ‘film school'
The man responsible for making Mrs. Maisel look, well, marvelous is Emmy-winning cinematographer M. David Mullen, who teams up again with collaborators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino on their latest series Étoile. Once again, he brings his brilliant, bright eye for detail to the world of ballet in both New York and Paris. (Pro tip: His Instagram posts are veritable works of art in themselves.) 'It's a true collaboration of love,' says Sherman-Palladino. Gold Derby: David, how did you first team up with Dan and Amy? More from GoldDerby Vincent D'Onofrio reveals what he is still learning about Kingpin after 10 years 'We don't half-ass anything': Simone Biles reflects on her Netflix docuseries and hints at 2028 Olympics 'Adolescence' sweeps Gotham TV Awards with 3 wins M. David Mullen: I interviewed for the pilot for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel back in the summer of 2016. And then we shot the pilot in the fall that year. Amy Sherman-Palladino: Yeah, and it went terrible. Mullen: Terrible, obviously. I blew it. But no one else was available. It went well, I guess. I actually interviewed with you guys the year before for the Gilmore Girls Netflix [movie]. But that was a phone interview, and Maisel was an in-person interview. So I guess I do much better in person than over the phone. Dan Palladino: Your physical presence is really powerful. Sherman-Palladino: He just sat down, he put a gun on the table and then just sort of sat there. We went, all right, we get it! Palladino: We actually had two people that we really trust in this business — there aren't many — that had known David or worked with David that gave him such a high recommendation and was saying, you guys are going to like this guy. Sherman-Palladino: They were saying, 'He's your people.' And they were right. So what makes him your person? What's the magic of David Mullen? Sherman-Palladino: David Mullen is a genius. We are not trained. We didn't go to NYU. We are writers who became directors so that we could protect our scripts basically. And so it's a lot of, 'Here's what's in my head and here's what I want to accomplish.' To have somebody be able to go along on that ride and then take what is in your head, understand what it is you're talking about, and then blow it up into this majestic piece that is so much better than you even thought it could be, that's very rare. He knows everything, by the way, which can be annoying for some people because there's nothing he doesn't know. I once asked him during the pilot, 'Do you think that this shot is a Steadicam or a dolly?' I've kept the email. It's a five-page dissertation on the evolution of Steadicam, who invented it, pictures of it on a warship, the initial [idea] that it was [built by] the military. I literally had to write back, 'OK, but is this a Steadicam or a dolly?' I'm happy to have people [tell me], 'You're an amazing director,' but I've got to tell you, David Mullen was my film school. He feels what you feel so deeply. He knows how much you want to do something. And he doesn't light women like he hates his wife, which is a big deal with DPs because a lot of them, I think, hate their wives. And then they come to a set and they look at the lead woman, they're like, this is the revenge that I can take. He lights the women so beautifully, and he's so actor-conscious, and he's so gentle. You think he's not a dictator and yet he totally is. Mullen: I take passive-aggressiveness to new levels. Sherman-Palladino: I love you for it because he can take things that I think like this is way too ambitious, we're never going to be able to get this, and then he'll add an extra layer of ambition onto it, and I'm like, 'All right, let's go!' Palladino: All the years of Maisel and this year of Étoile, there's nothing that Amy and I look back on and think, 'Oh, you know we could have done that but we weren't able to do it.' We realized everything the way we saw it in our heads because of David and some other key members of the crew. We were really lucky to gather all these guys together, especially David. Sherman-Palladino: David takes these unbelievable, beautiful photographs, because he'll wander off in the middle of the night, much to my terror. And that is the film you get. His eye is amazing, and I just wish he wouldn't wander off in the middle of the night with a camera alone. I want to have some muscle with him, because I can't lose him. He must remain alive for me. He's an artist in the purest form. And it's not about ego. It's about what the work is and what the world is and what we can make of it. It's just a delight every day to come to work when you're dealing with that sort of energy. David, what special challenges did set up for you? What did you have to accomplish for that tested your skills? Mullen: I think the challenge is that it wasn't an obvious approach to it. When we did Maisel, it's a period film. So you get all these elements you can draw from period movies to period photography to just the amazing architecture and fashion of the late '50s in America. It's a wealth of information that you can pull on and build a look around. When you do a modern story, what you do with modern settings is filter out all the stuff you don't like about the modern world. You don't like the color of these stop signs or these billboards. It's much more difficult to pin down in a modern setting what you want to do and don't want to do. In this kind of theatrical setting of dance, it was always a question of a documentary approach do we take to the lives of dancers and the behind-the-scenes world and how much do we take the theatrical approach of the world of theater and music. And there's no easy answer there. I think we kept trying to lean more towards the realism of it, the pain and effort these dancers go through, but also lean away from the reality that when you go behind the scenes at the Lincoln Center, it's nothing but cinder block corridors and fluorescent tubes. It's very brutalist in a way, but that's not the reality we wanted to embrace. Paris was a lot easier. Paris is just gorgeous everywhere you go, inside and outside. I think our basic thing that evolved was that Paris has this kind of naturally, old world reality to it. So New York has got to be perceived as modernist visually, just to have a contrast. You know what city you're in just by the shapes and the forms and the colors that you get in both cities. Paris is inherently warm. It's all sandstone and golds and painted things. So I wanted to play New York the opposite, which is sort of blues and greens. So it became more of an old world, new world look. There's a modern art feeling to New York, in terms of the shapes and the walls and the furniture, more pop art in a way. And Paris has got that patina of paintings of 18th, 19th century paintings. Amy and Dan, I love how you always manage to set up a new challenge for David and the crew. Was there a moment like that this season? Sherman-Palladino: I've been bugging David and Jim McConkey, our Steadicam whiz. I keep saying, 'Where's my dance cam?' When I did the telephone operator thing in Maisel [with the switchboard scene], they invented this thing that I call the McConkey wonder stick. It's like a tube and there was duct tape and they hung a camera, and they MacGyvered this thing that was so great. And they kept perfecting it. I kept saying, I want something that allows me the max amount of dance flexibility, so where's my dance cam? They're still working on it, but they did come up with a version of the wonder stick, when we did the one-shot in the pilot of the girl doing her fouettes and I wanted to start with her feet and I wanted to go up and I wanted to go over her and I wanted to come around to the back and end behind her. And there was some duct tape involved in that. Mullen: The problem is, to really fly something around, it has to be a smaller, lighter camera. Lately, some shows have been doing stuff with these smaller, pro-sumer kind of cameras, like Adolescence, like we used for the traffic jam sequence in Maisel. They stripped down their wonder stick into a Sony camera with a lighter boom pole. The trouble is we do a lot of visual effects work to our stuff in post, and that camera is fine if there's going to be zero visual effects done to the shot. But if we have to do extra work, our visual effects supervisor doesn't want us to use the cheaper, smaller, lighter cameras. We have to use our regular, heavier Alexa camera. That's been our one limitation is dealing with just mass and weight. Amy's always pushing what I call basic Newton physics. Anything that weighs a certain amount, it's hard to move and it's hard to stop because of inertia. And you always run into that with anything of any weight at all. We had that problem with the underwater ballet sequence in Maisel in Miami because we were trying to fly a camera underwater and then fly up over the water, look down on the pool and come back down on the other side of the pool. We discovered that you balance this 50-foot technocrane for the weight of the camera, except the moment the camera hits water, it stops being heavy, it becomes buoyant. So they couldn't balance the crane for both underwater and above the water. Essentially once it hit the water, two grips had to take a piece of pipe and shove it underwater and then hold it down like a drowning victim and then would let go and it would pop out of the water again and fly up in the air. We were just fighting basic Newtonian mechanics there. Palladino: On our first date, all she did was complain about Newtonian physics. Sherman-Palladino: I did. It's been bugging me for years. Mullen: Yeah, we've got to appeal the second law of thermodynamics. Watch our other recent Dream Team stories featuring Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, plus the two creators with star Luke Kirby. This article and video are presented by Prime Video. Best of GoldDerby Jacob Elordi reveals personal reason for joining 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North': 'It was something important to me' Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez on how the 'Agatha All Along' cast 'became a coven' when recording 'The Ballad of the Witches' Road' Jason Schwartzman on the breakneck 'Mountainhead' production: 'I've never done anything like it in my life' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dream Team: ‘Étoile' creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino on the secrets of their partnership: ‘You want to be jealous of something someone has done'
They're married to their work, their words, their worlds. The husband-and-wife team of Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino have created some of television's most meticulous, hilarious, singular series, populated with unforgettable characters from the Gilmores to the Maisels. And they've done it all working side-by-side as creators, writers, directors, and executive producers — and still managed to stay married for '400 years' (according to them). Gold Derby: What's your secret? How do you keep the magic going on and off-screen? More from GoldDerby 'Hacks' renewed for Season 5 ahead of Season 4 finale Iliza Shlesinger's comedy evolution: 'You don't want to be 42 telling the same jokes you told at 22' The mystery of Pedro Pascal's Emmy category solved as HBO's 'The Last of Us' submissions are revealed Amy Sherman-Palladino: So much alcohol. Just constant inebriation. I don't know, what is it, Dan? What's our magic? Dan Palladino: We get this question from all walks of life. Our teamster driver would be like, how do you work with your wife, Dan? There's people who find it horrifying. There's people who find it inspiring. I think it really started in earnest on Gilmore Girls, when Amy wrote the pilot and produced the pilot and was having some trouble. I knew exactly what she was doing. The script was very, very delicate, the project was very, very delicate. It wasn't a plot-heavy concept. Sherman-Palladino: It was a time when they were leaning heavily into Dawson's Creek. And it wasn't a show that the WB dancing frog totally understood. Palladino: I knew instinctively exactly what she was going for. So even though I was running Family Guy at the time when I would finish up there, I would go from North Hollywood over to Burbank and help her out. And I wrote some of the scripts in the beginning and that's sort of how it started. And then from there, we break every story together in a room, usually with other writers. If we have a disagreement… Sherman-Palladino: We cage fight it out. Palladino: The winner is the person who's most passionate about their side. And then once that path is picked, the other person takes that as their path as well, and there's no "I told you so" later. The worst thing you can do in a partnership is later on say, "I told you so" because it's uncreative, it's mean. I think that's the main thing that we sort of figured out. Sherman-Palladino: I don't think people realize the job is so big. It's such a ridiculously big job that there are many days where we don't see each other till martinis come out at dinner, because if I'm directing, he could be in editing. There's so much to do that we'll go in together and then we're sitting at a bar going, what was your day like? Palladino: We're not even together now. We're here using AI. SEE'Gilmore Girls,' 'Maisel' creator Amy Sherman-Palladino on the star who's 'separated at birth,' who wanted to get fired, and who will never get away How do you divide and conquer? Are there particular parts of the job either of you like more than the other or dislike more than the other that you hand off to each other? Sherman-Palladino: I can't write an outline to save my life. Palladino: That's true. I write all the outlines. Sherman-Palladino: At that point, I just want to start writing the script but the way it works in our world, we break things so detailed in the room because our outlines are meant to tell Bill Groom exactly what sets he needs to build, exactly what costumes we need, how many dancers Marguerite needs, what music we need, all of that is in our outlines so that when we hand them out to production, they can all go do their thing. So outlines are actually extremely important. They're not just a writer's tool. They're really more a production tool for us. Which means, I don't care. And Dan, God love him, is the patient one who actually sits and make sure that the outlines are cohesive, because it's the lifeline to making production work in our world. Palladino: We both started off as writers, obviously. And I think once we transitioned into directing, it's such a puzzle that you can never really solve. It's kept us really, really engaged in a way that I don't think we would have if we had not went into directing. Sherman-Palladino: Also writing is really lonely. You're sitting in a room and you're staring at a computer and the computer is basically saying to you, you're out of words, you're done. Why haven't you retired yet? So you're having a conversation with your computer saying, but no, I have to, like people are waiting for the script and your computer is saying, well, they're shit out of luck. And so while you're arguing with a piece of equipment, you could be on stage with actors and your DP. And if you get stuck on stage and something isn't quite working, people have ideas. That's where you see the dancers and the music and you get to hang out with Luke Kirby. How's that bad? Compared to the lonely sadness of being in a corner eating your hair when you're writing a script. SEE'Étoile' cast and creators on fast-talking, mean drunks, and what they learned from 'Gilmore Girls' How do you decide between the two of you who's going to tackle which script as the director? Because I know you're both so passionate about directing. Is it which episode you're more attached to? Sherman-Palladino: It's pretty organic. In general, it feels like this is something I'm going to take, or Dan's got such a strong instinct for the most important part of that, so that's what he should take. That actually has been kind of a pretty organic conversation. Frankly, when you're in this business for 400 years, which we're going on our 400th anniversary, when you've been doing it this long, what you want is to be jealous of something that someone else has done. So there's nothing kind of better for me than if he directs an episode that I didn't necessarily want, my eye wasn't on that episode, but then I see him and I see what he's done and I'm like, God damn it, then I'm really jealous and angry so that in my next episode, I've got up my own game. It keeps you on your toes. Palladino: Appropriate for a dance show. How did you come up with the idea for this dance show? And by the way, did you have a crystal ball where suddenly arts were going to become a thing that we were going to have to fight for? Sherman-Palladino: No. And how sad that we're in a position where we're fighting for something so important. I don't know if people understand that, drawing on the walls of caves was art. Art has been part of the human experience for as long as there have been humans, and to be losing it should terrify everybody because the best part of people is when you think differently and you can learn about other experiences that aren't your own, or your mind can go someplace that you didn't think it could go, that's what art does. So no, we didn't foresee it. I was a dancer, I trained as a dancer my whole life. I have got three back surgeries to prove it. Welcome to the world of rods in your lower back. So it's always kind of been in in my zeitgeist and Dan was a musician. Our writing is rhythmic and has a patter to it. It's an organic world for us. We tiptoed into it with Bunheads, although Bunheads was much more of a coming of age with a background in ballet. Dancers were very important to the Maisel experience. It just felt like a world we wanted to sort of live in. We love dancers. We love the fact that these amazing creatures that are totally completely devoted to an art form where they're guaranteed to never make a dime. Which is a shocking thing. It's just pure love of the art form. That's a spirit and an energy you kind of need in your world. So we slid into the idea of, if we were ever going to do a workplace comedy, what sort of workplace comedy would we do? And ballet seemed to be the right fit. What do you want people to take away from the show? Sherman-Palladino: The ballet is a weird, wonderful, interesting world. It's not all tutus and, swans on stage, that it's very athletic. You're racing against the clock. It's grueling. It's tough. It's cutthroat. It's weird. And frankly, it's for everyone. It's storytelling. If you like story, if you like athletics, if you like music, if you like drama and comedy or just spectacle, that's what ballet is. Ballet is not some precious art form that the Van-uppeties go on a Friday night with their monocles. That is not what ballet is. Ballet is for everyone. And if more people could just realize that it's this wonderful thing that's right there and be a part of it and experience it, it can change your world a little bit. Palladino: It's an entertaining funny show about the fragility of arts. Everybody loves the arts in some form or another. We live in New York City. We see people with MAGA hats, going to Broadway shows. Sherman-Palladino: And crying, and coming out sobbing, and they're touched. Palladino: It's something that can bring people together. So it's something that we want to protect, whether it's ballet or theater or television or films to be seen theatrically, not all on TV. It's something for all of us to fight for. And we just wanted to obviously do it in an entertaining way. As you look back over the course of the season, is there a moment you're proudest of? Palladino: We didn't even finish the first episode until the very, very end of our shoot. We had never done anything like that because we were crisscrossing countries, and we had to get out of Paris for the Olympics. … This was our chance to do like a big ensemble workplace comedy set in a dramatic world. I think we achieved what we were attempting to do. And yeah, it was the most ambitious thing we've ever attempted for sure. Sherman-Palladino: Yeah, there's something wrong with us. We need to be checked out, for sure. Palladino: But also we hate boredom. But we love these actors and we got to live in Paris for a while and there's no bad there. Nothing bad about that at all. And given all of that, what do you want to see in season two? Sherman-Palladino: I want there to be a season two. I know that there was an announcement that we got a two-season pickup, but that is fake news, ladies and gentlemen. So it's tough. We're in a time where IP is king and we're not based on a comic book, although I've tried to lie to Amazon and say, no, it was a very successful graphic novel. … We would just love to have a season two and I'm not sure if that's possible. So we're going to live with the wonderfulness of these actors and how great they are and these beautiful dancers. This article and video are presented by Prime Video. Best of GoldDerby 'The Pitt' star Supriya Ganesh on Mohan 'reworking' her trauma and when she'll realize Abbot is flirting with her TV sound editors roundtable: 'Adolescence' and 'Secret Level' 'Secret Level' sound editor Matt Yocum on using the 'punchy aesthetic' of video game audio for new animated series Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Étoile' Review: Amy Sherman-Palladino's Amazon Ballet Dramedy Pirouettes Gracefully Before Stumbling in the Final Act
Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has the Emmys and The WB's Gilmore Girls has the two decades of snowballing affection, but if I'm feeling contrary — and I'm usually feeling contrary — I'll say that my favorite Amy Sherman-Palladino show is Bunheads. Because Bunheads only consists of 18 episodes, it's all potential. It started bumpy, found its voice completely and then ABC Family canceled it, so I can eternally believe it never would have been marred by Sherman-Palladino's inevitable flirtations with tweeness or her insatiable appetite for ramming her characters into narrative brick walls. It's pure, delightful, perfectly cast Sherman-Palladino goodness. More from The Hollywood Reporter For Luke Kirby, 'Étoile' Was a History Lesson 'The Amateur' Star Rachel Brosnahan Insists She Still Feels Like an Amateur Amy Sherman-Palladino Recalls "Weird" Network Notes For 'Gilmore Girls': "Why Isn't Rory Having Sex?" Bunheads was also a show about potential. Its key characters were budding ballet dancers, which allowed the show to avoid the challenges of depicting excellence — pressures that Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino struggled with when it came to Midge Maisel and her comedy — and concentrate, rather, on youthful enthusiasm. Sherman-Palladino and Palladino return to the world of ballet with their new Amazon dramedy Étoile, which, for me, triggered some initial concerns of self-seriousness with its title and focus on, well, excellence in an international context. I was more than prepared to write a 'It's no Bunheads' review, but it's a relief to report that, at least initially, Étoile doesn't take itself too seriously. As a result, for six or seven episodes, the hour-long series is likably light-on-its-feet, infused with its creators' love and admiration for this world and boasting strong lead performances from Luke Kirby and Charlotte Gainsbourg as well as a knockout English-language debut from co-star Lou de Laâge. A season-concluding downward spiral follows, one that will be familiar to even the most devoted and forgiving of Sherman-Palladino fans — that thing where characters behave in unjustifiable ways just to set things up tantalizingly for the next run of episodes. Some of the things that happen in the Étoile homestretch are so pointlessly dumb they soured me on a show that I'd mostly been enjoying. Kirby plays Jack, executive director for the Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York City, while Gainsbourg is Genevieve, interim director of Le Ballet National in Paris. Their respective institutions are struggling and if their new seasons flop, ballet could die forever. Or something. Genevieve offers a solution: They'll swap companies, or at least parts of companies, as somebody puts it, 'to give Paris a jolt of New York City energy and New York City a splash of Parisian style.' To help with the process, eccentric billionaire and possible war criminal Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow, devouring scenery) agrees to pay. Jack is wary. Jack and Genevieve, who have a romantic past and a flirting present, select members of the other's company to filch for this one-year experiment. Genevieve snags the Metropolitan's brilliant-but-odd star choreographer Tobias (Gideon Glick) and French dancer Mishi (Taïs Vinolo), who was cut from the Parisian company years earlier. Jack drafts Paris' étoile, the no-bullshit Cheyenne (de Laâge), who is introduced as an environmental warrior and then, by the end of the first season, is flying back and forth from Paris to NYC at a moment's notice because lots of characters on this show are introduced with core characteristics that eventually fizzle away. 'Etoile' means 'star' in this context, but don't worry about a necessary learning curve. Étoile is fueled by a love of ballet, its movement and its music — Jack and Genevieve are introduced debating Tchaikovsky vs. Aaron Copland — but this is not a piece of extreme immersion packed with intimidating ballet terminology or references. Nor does Étoile aspire to be some sort of gritty examination of ballet's dark underbelly. There's a show to be made about ballet's crushing physical toll and institutional restrictions, centered on rampant drug use, screwing and abuses of power. I know this, because I watched Starz's Flesh and Bone and found it properly harrowing, if not particularly good. Étoile features jokes about dancers being overworked and about their messed-up feet and whatnot, but acknowledging elements of this world that could be interpreted as physical and psychological exploitation through a different prism is not on the agenda. Instead, it's a Sherman-Palladino-friendly combination of fast-talking whimsy and graceful direction — Amy and Daniel wrote and directed much of the season, though there's a midseason pause for other scribes and director Scott Ellis — in the service of what is, more than anything, a fish-out-of-water workplace comedy about people devoted to an elite art form. The creators' general enjoyment, rather than eagle-eyed interrogation, of the milieu carries over to how Étoile handles dance itself. Several members of the cast have extensive ballet experience, including Vinolo and David Alvarez (West Side Story), who plays the only American dancer strong enough to partner with Cheyenne. But most do not, and there's enough doubling in the dance numbers that those with only a casual interest in the art form probably won't notice who actually is doing their own dancing and when (attentive viewers surely will). Étoile is very selective when it comes to how much dance it actually shows. After the first episode, there's a long stretch in which we only get fleeting rehearsal footage, before a fourth episode with six featured performances, then another gap before a dance-heavy finale. Either way, it's a show that more frequently than not asks you to take the dialogue at its word that certain performances are exceptional or certain creative forces are brilliant. The dance sequences are generally simply shot, lots of full-body and full-stage framings, very few sweaty close-ups — all fitting for a show that aspires to a little distance rather than uncomfortable intimacy. Everything is photographed with a handsome fluidity; it's the rare series that gives the Steadicam operator a prominent position in the credits. Kirby, an Emmy winner as a somewhat excessively lovable Lenny Bruce in Mrs. Maisel, steps into the lead role here and it's no surprise that he vibes completely with Jack's stream-of-consciousness irritation — which, one could argue, he treats as performatively as some other characters treat their dance moves. Gainsbourg matches Kirby's nervous energy, and they have a chemistry that justifies their steady flirtation. It hurts Gainsbourg and the show a tiny bit that in dividing the narrative between New York and Paris — a largely landmark-free version of Paris, complete with a joke mocking Emily in Paris for the ubiquity of the Eiffel Tower — the Paris company gets the socially uncomfortable Mishi and the highly withdrawn Tobias, and therefore lacks the energy of the New York chapters, driven by the animated de Laâge. De Laâge is a well-established French screen presence with a pair of Cesar nominations to her credit, but this is her first English-language TV role. Jumping into English-language television with an Amy Sherman-Paladino show is like walking in a snow flurry for the first time and then deciding to heli-ski down the Matterhorn. And this is not a light Amy Sherman-Palladino role. Cheyenne is a storyteller and the writers are sticking these long monologues in de Laâge's mouth and saying, 'Sell this!' And she does. More than half the laughs I got came from moments like de Laâge's dolphin impression or a lecture she gives to Jack's groin, while the most effective emotional arc of the season is probably between Cheyenne and SuSu (LaMay Zhang), a young girl whom Cheyenne steers into ballet classes. That Étoile largely fails Cheyenne by the end of the season takes nothing away from de Laâge's breakout performance. Favoring levity here, the broadly comic supporting performances work best for me, especially Callow, whose Crispin exists in a far wackier and wilder series, and David Haig as the Metropolitan's artistic director, who has early hilarious moments and definitely gets let down in the season's climax. The show never figures out what to do with Alvarez's Gael, leaving a bland center to several more of those twists in the last episode. The writers are much more confident with getting brief value out of a handful of Sherman-Palladino regulars, including Yanic Truesdale and Kelly Bishop, who show up and steal a scene or two, unsaddled with any of the concluding missteps. I've watched and loved enough Amy Sherman-Palladino shows that I should know that questionable seasonal cliffhangers are part of her storytelling vernacular, and I should know better than to be this disappointed by the end of a season that I mostly enjoyed. Maybe that's why I like Bunheads as much as I do. Sure, it ends badly, but I can blame ABC Family for that. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Étoile': 'Gilmore Girls' creator gives us another endearing mother-daughter relationship in new show
Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Bunheads creator Amy Sherman-Palladino continues to make smart, witty, fun and incredibly enjoyable TV with the release of Étoile (now on Prime Video). Co-created with her husband Daniel Palladino, Étoile is centred around two struggling ballet companies, one in New York and one in Paris, that decide to do a talent swap to try to reinvigorate interest and hopefully make some money. Led by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel alum Luke Kirby, along with Gideon Glick, and French talents Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou de Laâge, in addition to Gilmore Girls star Yanic Truesdale, Étoile has that signature Sherman-Palladino tone, but with an interesting immersion into the international world of ballet. If you're thinking filming a series in two countries and two languages is a lofty goal, the show's creators agree, but they pulled it off with great success. The very first scene of the series shows a young dancer, Susu Li (LaMay Zhang), following along to a video of a ballet class on a cellphone. Her mom is a cleaner at the Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York and records classes for her daughter to learn from, at the studio at night, while she's working. As the story progresses we meet Cheyenne Toussaint (de Laâge), a strong-willed French dancer who's among the talents swapped to New York City. It was the connection between Susu and Cheyenne that began the journey to create Étoile. "The relationship between Cheyenne and the little girl, Susu, was a germ of an idea that we were mulling, a ballerina who is a little contentious, has her own way of doing things and is constantly searching for the meaning in what ... her life has become," Sherman-Palladino told Yahoo Canada. "A very un-motherly person finds it in mentoring this little girl." "That was the initial thing, way, way, way back when Cheyenne wasn't even French then, she was American. And then when the idea of the swap and the two companies ... came into it, that's when it all started to blossom out from there. And that's when we decided, 'Hey, here's how we make sure that Luke Kirby has to look us in the eye for the next few months, and he can't go anywhere.'" Gilmore Girls fans fell in love with the mother-daughter relationship between Rory and Lorelai, and Sherman-Palladino gave us another endearing mother-daughter duo in Étoile, between Cheyenne and her mom Bruna (Marie Berto). But their bond isn't exactly warm and fuzzy like Lorelai and Rory. They're very direct with each other, almost harsh, but it's a quality they both share. Bruna is the complete opposite of a prima ballerina, but you get an understanding of why Cheyenne is so committed, not just to ballet, but to everything she's interested in. "We wanted her to come from a background where the mother had no interest in the arts, very blue collar, the arts were frivolous," Sherman-Palladino explained. "Because there was a feeling that it opened Cheyenne up to thinking about the world, thinking about the world around her, thinking about things other than just ballet." "It allowed her [to] think bigger, which also allowed her to be even more judgmental of people who don't think big and don't commit as much, and don't commit to everything. No matter what she does, she's 100 per cent in. ... She just doesn't understand a world where people aren't like that. She suffers no fools gladly, and so does her mother. So there's an interesting dynamic there between what she learned and how she put it into her life, which is so different from her mother's life." Sherman-Palladino also highlighted that de Laâge and Marie Berto together are a great pairing. "They should have a sitcom, a French sitcom," she said. "Just follow those two around all day long." "The talent that we got to harness in France was unbelievable and Marie and Lou together are just, they're just golden." Quirky characters are also Sherman-Palladino's specialty, and while that applies to many characters in Étoile, possibly the best example of that is Glick's character Tobias Bell. He's a New York choreographer who always has his headphones on, or around his neck, and has a unique way of working through his dances, including dancing in the middle of a busy New York street. When he moves to Paris, it just feels like chaos for him without his routine, and a significant source of his stress is not having access to his Crest toothpaste. But Glick actually started in the writers room for Étoile, and as Tobias developed in the story, it was clear that Glick was the best person for the role. "We worked with Gideon as an actor on Maisel ... and he was really interested in writing, and he gave us a couple of samples, and ... we really liked them," Palladino explained. "And he's such an intelligent actor, we knew that giving him his first writing job was going to be a bargain for us." "And then, as we had created this character, ... it was slowly dawning on us that it's Gideon. And as we were talking about the character in the room, ... we would look over at Gideon, and I know Gideon was kind of looking at us like, 'You haven't said anything, but am I?' It naturally evolved. ... Through osmosis I think we wrote it for him. He may have controlled our minds." While Étoile has a lot of beloved guest stars, including Kelly Bishop who played Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, a particularly exciting cameo is Jonathan Groff, who starred alongside Glick in the musical Spring Awakening. Groff plays Tobias' estranged boyfriend and the two have an interesting, and hysterical moment of reconnection later in the season. "We knew Jonathan ... and it just seemed perfect to bring those two together," Palladino said. "They had not acted across from each other since Spring Awakening, so they were really, really excited." As much as we love watching projects led by Palladino and Sherman-Palladino, it's clear that actors love working with them just as much, if not more, with many of them returning collaborate with the duo on multiple projects. That includes two Canadian talents Luke Kirby, who's from Hamilton, Ont., and Yanic Truesdale, who played the beloved character of Michel Gerard in Gilmore Girls, who's from Montreal. "Luke, ... we wanted him to be the lead and we wanted to spend more time with him, ... and I just think he's so incredibly talented, and there's so many things that he can do that we didn't get to explore on Maisel because Lenny Bruce was a very specific character," Sherman-Palladino said. For Truesdale, Palladino and Sherman-Palladino were excited about being able to write a character for the actor that was "completely different" from Michel. "We have somebody who we know how to write for, we know how funny he is, we know all these things that he could do, and he speaks French," Sherman-Palladino said. "And we put him next to Charlotte and the two of them just clicked immediately." But Sherman-Palladino also highlighted that as she works with many stars from her shows, it's in the back of her mind to bring them back for a new role in another story. "Whenever you work with great people, one of the sad things about shows ending is the people that you look forward to writing for, ... I looked forward to writing for Rachel [Brosnahan], I looked forward to writing for Alex [Borstein]. And when you don't get to do that anymore, it feels like you've lost a limb or something," she said. "In the back of your mind you're kind of like, 'Yeah, I've got to get them back in. ... It's always there."
San Francisco Chronicle
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Can 'Étoile' make ballet cool? 'Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' creators pirouette to ballet-themed show
NEW YORK (AP) — Ballet is beautiful. Ballet is ethereal. Ballet is mysterious. Can ballet also be cool? The creators of the new Prime Video show 'Étoile' – Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, of 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' fame — are betting yes. Or, shall we say 'oui' – the show is split between New York and Paris as it tracks the story of two ballet companies joining forces to attract audiences and stay afloat. And 'afloat' is a good word to describe the chief appeal of the show: real lifts, not to mention turns and leaps, by real ballet dancers, many of whom are in the cast. Sharp-eyed viewers might notice several New York City Ballet stars in supporting roles. A mix of 'Bunheads' (also from the Palladinos), 'Emily in Paris' — with way more leg warmers — and perhaps classic ballet movie 'The Turning Point,' 'Étoile' seems to know it lives and dies by the quality of its dancing. You can't fake it And that's because, as actor David Alvarez says, 'Ballet is one of those things you can't fake.' 'You can't just wing it and pretend you can do it,' says Alvarez, who made his name as one of the original dancing Billy Elliots on Broadway, winning a best-actor Tony along with two other Billys at age 14, and later played Bernardo in Steven Spielberg's 'West Side Story' remake. 'Any dancer will be able to spot from a mile away that you're not actually a ballet dancer, just by how you walk or your posture,' he says. Alvarez plays Gael, a dancer who has a stormy relationship with Cheyenne, herself a very stormy prima ballerina — or 'étoile,' the French word for "star' — who comes to New York as part of an elaborate talent swap between the two companies. The gimmick has made uneasy partners of Jack, who runs Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York, and Geneviève (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who runs the top company in Paris. (The two troupes are very thinly veiled versions of New York City Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet.) Dancers learned to act, and actors to dance Alvarez is one of those hybrids, an actor who also dances. Taïs Vinolo, who plays young dancer Mishi, is a real-life ballet dancer who's making her acting debut. Normally, she says, 'We express with our body. Expressing with another form, like speaking and acting, was a bit of a challenge.' Minolo feels confident that the creators found the truth in ballet. 'People don't have a good idea of what ballet is and how hard it is,' she says. 'They see the pink tutu and the pointe shoes. But they don't see that it's very physical. And it's hard. It's a lot of discipline, and it's also very hard mentally.' Ballet dancers are trained athletes The physical challenge of ballet was just what Sherman-Palladino was looking to get across. The showrunner trained seriously in ballet from the age of 4, before fate guided her into a writing career. 'And she has the back surgeries to prove it,' quips husband Dan. 'It's an amazing world,' says Sherman-Palladino. 'They're amazing artists. And it's literally an art form where you're just guaranteed not to make any money. So you have to truly just love it. 'You know, they're trained athletes,' Sherman-Palladino adds. 'They're unbelievably strong, and just the things that they can do with their bodies is ridiculous.' She sees dance as like 'silent movies almost — it's storytelling, it's acting, it's emotion and heartache and happiness and love ... I think that so many people who think that dance is not for them just haven't seen it.' Lost in translation? Some of the French cast members barely spoke English, and vice versa. The show takes place in two languages — but the signature rat-a-tat Palladino banter can be hard to translate. 'It was tricky because we are very precise with our language, but our language doesn't exactly translate to French," Sherman-Palladino says. 'Finding a translator may have been the hardest thing that we had to deal with on the entire show — the right translator that caught the essence of our script. So we kept changing translators 'til we finally found one that everybody could agree on.' For Lou De Laâge, who plays Cheyenne, it was especially challenging because she spoke little English when she was cast. But the writer's strike meant she had nine months to prepare, rather than three, which proved a huge help. Gainsbourg, a British-French actor and singer-songwriter, spoke English but still found it tricky to get into the Palladino rhythm. 'I was very nervous about learning the lines,' she says. 'I'm very slow. That was already challenging. Then the rhythm was something completely new. … in the end, I got to understand the humor and the pace, (but) it took me a little while.' Learning what ballet is all about Kirby, whose Jack runs Metropolitan Ballet Theater, says he knew little about ballet beforehand — but had a cousin who was a dancer, 'and so I'd see her putting her body through torment.' Gainsbourg only spent a year studying ballet when she was 4. She stopped but did piano in the same building — the Salle Pleyel in Paris — and remembers the elevator stopping on the ballet floor, where she'd go into the dressing room and pick up 'a very good, talcum powder smell. And that's my emotional remembrance of ballet.' As for De Laâge, her mother enrolled her in intensive dance training as a child, but it was a mother's dream and not the daughter's. 'So that became a fight between us because she wanted that for me, and I didn't want that for me,' De Laâge says. As an actor, 'I worked with really good dancers, but that wasn't my passion. I love watching dance.' What Gainsbourg has taken away from doing a series on ballet is 'the fact that it's so extreme and that everybody is working there for their passion. It's not about money ... it's really about the art, and they're all completely passionate.' Just don't touch the pointe shoes! Ask the real ballerinas in the cast — for example, NYCB stars Tiler Peck and Unity Phelan, who play small roles, as does former principal Robbie Fairchild — and they'll tell you: Ballerinas sew their own ribbons on their pointe shoes. Nobody does it for them. So Minolo had to demur when, on the series, the crew offered to sew the ribbons on for her. 'I have a very specific way,' she explains. 'And I don't like when people touch my pointe shoes. I like to stitch the edge of my pointe shoes to make the platform bigger." 'I do that too!' replies Alvarez, and the two laugh. 'Good for balancing." 'Yeah exactly,' Minolo giggles. "You understand.'
