Queue And A

‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Star Marin Hinkle Reveals What She’d Love To Have Happen To Rose In Season 4

If you haven’t watched Amazon’s hit series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and you need a good laugh, get to it.

Go on; we’ll wait.

Are you caught up now? Good. (If you haven’t watched Season 3 in its entirety quite yet, know that there will be some spoilers ahead.) The series, which recently released its third—and most watched opening weekend that garnered its immediate renewal for Season 4—tells of Miriam “Midge” Maisel’s journey from wife and mother to a stand-up comic in NYC in the late 1950s and, with Season 3, early ’60s.

Marin Hinkle, who plays Midge’s mother Rose Weissman, spoke with us about being impetuous, the clothes, taking friends to Paris, and what she’d love to see happen in Season 4.

DECIDER: In Season 2, Rose heads to Paris to immerse herself in art and romance, and it’s so unlike what we had seen of her up until then. Have you ever done anything so impulsive in your life?

MARIN HINKLE: She’s inspirational to me in the way that she does that. I grew up with parents who were really academic and put sort of the pursuit of the mind ahead of throwing caution to the wind. I would never have been able to be the kid that gets on a plane and ends up in Hollywood and says, “Here I am, world!” I was more like the turtle than the hare and took my time.

There were moments particularly when Ben [her son with husband Randall Sommer] was young, where I would get cast in a play in New York. I remember I would tell my mom that I just got cast in this play, and she would listen for a moment. She would be excited for me, and then the balancing act would be “What are you going to do, pull your kid from school and bring him to New York?” And I said, “I think I am.”

But you’re not like Rose…

Well, when I was a struggling New York theatre actor, I had no money. We’re talking like at the most $300 in my bank account. I was eating the rice and the beans and all that. And there was a moment where I saw in the New York Times–which I did read, not even online at the time–there was an ad for $200 round-trip tickets to Paris. My boyfriend at the time, now my husband, couldn’t go.

I called my mom and asked if she wanted to go, and she said yes. So I flew to Paris for like two days. I didn’t speak the language, and I just kind of wandered around like in a daze.

So there you go. It was like her. Just for like 48 hours though, not like Rose gets to go for a month or two.

Has there ever been a time in your life where you lost yourself, the core of who you are, either for someone else or something else, and you had to find your way back?

I think I still am on that journey. I’ve always been connected and drawn to really strong women. I had a best friend–who I had had through high school and then both we happened to live in Los Angeles–and our boys happened to be best friends out here.

She and I had a moment where I think she was feeling like she needed to carry me in a way, and it reminded me of the way Rose talks. She sort of said I think you need to find the strength yourself without leaning so much on others. I think she was right.

I was not the mom that thought, “I know how to do this.” I was more like the mom that said, “Let me read the book, let me call my friend.” I was really nervous about it. But then, I figured out that no mother ever knows how to do any of it.

Did the friendship ever rekindle?

Yes. This is kind of exquisite. She and I never wanted it to affect the relationship with the boys, so we just needed a little bit of singular growth rather than co-dependent growth.

After a couple years we started to take walks again with each other here in LA. Having had a little time just allowed us to reignite in an extraordinary friendship.

This is going to sound amazing. I invited her and both our sons to Paris when I was shooting.

Oh, wow.

She’s a chocolatier, and we did a chocolate route through Paris. It was a journey that was unbelievable for our friendship.

That’s fantastic. Getting back to the show, though, I notice how the hairstyles date people.

Yeah. More modest, you know what I mean? They put on brooches; they curled their hair. And Amy [Sherman-Palladino, the show’s creator], hats off to her. She does not let a woman go off to pasture as they get older.

Caroline [Aaron], Jane [Lynch], and I are women over 50, and my, God, each season she gives us more complicated, wonderful, idiosyncratic stuff, and we get only fuller and richer.

MAISEL S3 HINKLE
Photo: Amazon

What else do you love about Rose?

Well, I am a pretty horrible dresser in real life. I do not know how to shop and put an outfit together. But this character, when she presents it’s like a small work of art

I never understood that stuff. I swear to God, I have been in Bergdorf’s probably never before I got this job. We had an event at Bergdorf’s this past fall. They were putting the windows in “Maisel” form. I traveled up and down Bergdorf’s looking at beautiful dresses and then thinking if we get nominated for the Golden Globes, which we did, I’m going to wear blah-dee-blah dress, and guess what, I chose it that day. I’ve never done such a thing before.

And then another thing about Rose is that she has a kind of silent strength that I think is maybe the backbone of the family. As Abe spins out and decides in this third season that he’s not going to continue his job and that they’re going to look for a house, underneath it all Rose is sort of falling apart. I think she’s a lot stronger than she looks. I love that about her.

Any ideas of where you expect or hope Rose to go in Season 4?

I think it would be really extraordinary for her to be more part of the comedy worlds of the show. People always say, oh, have you done stand-up or whatever, and I haven’t at all. I’d be terribly nervous and couldn’t do it. But it would be really fun to see Rose in a darker, edgier place–if she could end up at the comedy clubs and sit up at night, all night, maybe smoking her cigarettes and bringing her friends and meeting Lenny Bruce. How about that?

I’d like to have Rose meet Lenny.

Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski is a writer and author of the national award-winning humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. Like Mrs. Maisel, she writes and performs stand-up comedy. Unlike her, she’s never wanted to be a road comic. For more Wojo, check her out at www.wojosworld.com and on Twitter: @TheMicheleWojo.

Stream The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime