'I never saw one person say d*ck about Don Draper in 'Mad Men' not hanging out with his kids.'
Amy Sherman-Palladino is not here for gender biases. The 54-year-old creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel speaks out against the main criticism she has received regarding her show's main character, Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan).
"The main negative thing that I've been getting about Midge is about [her being away from her] kids, and I have no patience for that s**t whatsoever," Sherman-Palladino says of the stand-up comedian and mother of two during a Comedy Showrunner Roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter. "I never saw one person say d*ck about Don Draper in Mad Men not hanging out with his kids. So f**k that s**t. These kids have two sets of grandparents who dote on them, and they have a father that's there all the time. If this woman has to go out on the road to make a living, f**k you if you have an issue with that. And I mean that with all the love in my heart."
The comedy writer, who also created power mom Lorelai Gilmore on the series Gilmore Girls, adds that she never focuses on how her audiences will receive her central characters.
"No, I never give a s**t about that, especially when you're dealing with women characters," she says. "I started on Roseanne, I was in my 20s, and it was me [and] a [female writing] partner, and we were the only girls on staff, and you learn really quickly what the views on women were, what was likable and what was, 'Oooh, don't yell too much because you're too strident.' You learn very quickly that if you reminded one of the execs in the room at all of his wife, you're f**ked. So I have never gone into anything worried about what people are going to think in those terms."
The showrunner also opens up about future challenges her New York-based comedy might face in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Frankly, for us it's going to depend on how much Amazon is willing to open the checkbook because we can't change the style of what the show is. We can't change crowd scenes, so if it comes down to, you can only have 10 people as extras, then our special effects lead is going to come in and make 10 people look like 400, and that is just time and money," she says of potential social distancing measures.
Sherman-Palladino adds that the setting for her 1960s-based show is something executives have tried to get her to change.
"And they're really trying to get you to film anywhere but in Manhattan. They're trying to say, 'Hey, Westchester is open.' And it's like, 'Great, she's not playing the Westchester Comedy Festival, so it's not really working for us,'" she shares. "So it means we're going to need more stages, which means more money. And a lot of swabs up the nose."
RELATED CONTENT:
News
