The 'Veep' star plays late-night host Gordon Ford in 'Maisel's final season.
Every great mind needs a foil, and in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's final season, Midge Maisel seems to have met her match in Reid Scott's Gordon Ford, a quintessential '60 late-night host who ultimately -- whether he likes it or not -- helps launch Midge to the heights of success we see her achieve in the show's flash-forwards.
Scott officially joined Maisel last season, as Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) and rival Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch) duked it out for laughs on his show. However, the actor takes center stage in the final episodes when Midge comes to work for his writing staff. The pair has already shared a surprise kiss on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, and in episode 5, Gordon finally wore Midge down for a dinner date that leaves their future open to several intriguing possibilities...for now.
So, what was it like for Scott to dive headfirst into the Emmy-winning comedy's final season?
"It was a blast," Scott told ET's Deidre Behar ahead of the final season. "First of all, parachuting into a show as iconic as Maisel is an absolute gift, but it's also very intimidating, and knowing that this was going to be the fifth and final season and how they really wanted to raise the bar even further, really go out on the highest of high notes, I love that. I love that kind of challenge."
"I love what Amy [Sherman-Palladino] and Dan [Palladino] tasked me to do with this character, and all the research I got to do, the other actors I got to play with it," he continued. "It was really unlike anything else I've ever gotten to do -- from day one, just dropping into this place and having this world just completely fleshed out. It was unlike anything I think I'll ever get to do again."
Gordon's right-hand man on the show, Mike Carr, is played by Brosnahan's real-life husband, Jason Ralph, which made things hilariously awkward when it came time to talk about the relationship between the characters, however, both agreed that it's not hard to have great on-screen chemistry with such a talented actress.
"Rachel has an impossibly hard task, not only playing this character, with these very difficult scripts, but also as the lead of the show, she's kind of fostering everyone as they're coming in," Scott shared. "She made me feel so welcome from day one and we instantly just kind of hit it off... I think there was a lot of mutual respect and mutual admiration and she's just a great scene partner."
"We just had a lot of fun working the scenes together, which is required, because it's very word specific," he continued. "There's a musicality that you never want to drop or to belie at all. And a lot of the tone comes off of her... every take is just so clean and precise and perfect. But she's so incredibly generous too. It made my job very easy."
What was difficult for Scott was comparing Gordon to another of his iconic roles, snotty White House staffer Dan Egan on the Emmy-winning HBO comedy Veep.
"Maisel is challenging in a completely different way than Veep was," he explained. "Veep was, you know, improvisational jazz. We're working off of a script, a very well-crafted script that we're then encouraged to kind of dance all over and really improvise quite a lot and make it our own, and Maisel is the exact opposite where it's again, this wonderfully crafted script, but that is letter-perfect because again, there's a dance to it, there's a music to it. So, it's two completely different skill sets."
Both, however, found the actor trying to keep pace with incredibly talented leading ladies.
"One, you're just trying to keep up with Julia Louis-Dreyfus because she's just endlessly funny and so quick with her improvisations, and then Rachel Brosnahan, which is like, take after take, you're getting a master performance and you really want to rise up and meet her at that place," he shared. "I've been very lucky, I've gotten to work with a lot of strong women. Julia, Laura Linney, now Rachel. It's like I keep falling ass-backwards into really, really great jobs with really wonderful women."
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is streaming now on Prime Video.
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