‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Stars Break Down ‘Horny Midge and Joel’ and Flash Forwards That Made Them Gasp
[Editor’s note: This post contains spoilers for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, including the series finale.]
The final season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” featured plenty of time jumps to the future that surprised fans, but perhaps none were quite as shocking as when Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) visited with Joel (Michael Zegen)…in jail.
It was a stunning twist for the actors as well.
“I don’t like to know anything in advance,” Zegen said as part of an IndieWire’s Awards Spotlight conversation with Brosnahan. “I like to read the episodes and take it from there.”
“I was always trying to tell you secrets!” Brosnahan cut in with a laugh. “But I was bursting at the seams with some secrets and I needed to tell someone — and you’re my person and you wouldn’t hear it half the time.”
Zegen eventually learned Joel’s dark and somewhat mysterious future thanks to his makeup artist spilling the beans, but the scene from Episode 5 remains most memorable for the two based on what viewers didn’t see.
“There was actually an alt ending to that scene, which was just horny Midge and Joel in jail,” Brosnahan said. “It was one of the horniest scenes we’d ever shot. I wonder why it didn’t make it. They were talking about boning in a trailer, no?”
“He was saying he wanted to like dive across the table and do all kinds of things,” Zegen said.
“So we know, even though it didn’t make the final cut, there was a version where they were still hot for each other ‘til the very end,” Brosnahan concluded, putting the most positive spin imaginable on jailhouse coitus.
As exes, sometimes friends, co-parents and occasionally lovers, the two’s onscreen relationship has run the gamut over five seasons of the Prime Video Emmy-winning series, so going into the final season the actors wondered where things would land for the duo.
“I had a conversation with Amy when I asked her what would happen over the course of the show,” Brosnahan said. “She told me that they would never formally end up together — that there would always be a lot of love there, they would always be a part of each other’s lives, but there would never be on exactly the same page at the same time ever again. And that one day, when Midge ends up in her penthouse apartment she will always look back on the day before Joel left her as the happiest day of her life.”
All together now: Awww.
But fans know Mrs. Maisel made things work with her true love after all — it just wasn’t the one she originally suspected. In the final episode of the series, Midge finally scores her big break by doing an unsanctioned stand up set live during “The Gordon Ford Show,” with her family, including Joel, in the studio audience. The scene was very art-imitates-life in how it mirrored the on-set experience.
“I’ve been sent a lot of videos of that last moment even since the show aired, and it looks like it felt,” Brosnahan said. “Amy kept asking for another take and another take of that final moment. And I was like, ‘What does she need? What’s wrong?’ And then we realized it was hard to call that final cut, print, check, and call the series.”
“It was hard,” Zegen said. “Rachel had to do the same set over and over again, all week long, while they got the writers’ reaction, while they got audience reaction. When the last ‘cut, print, that’s a wrap’ was uttered the confetti came down, everybody was hugging, champagne was passed around, it was four in the morning, I think. It was tough but it was beautiful.”
Their long-running series may now officially be behind them following a charming full-circle finale, but some fans are still looking for clues about the duo’s happily ever after status.
“A bunch of people have asked me about the scene, the little clip with you at the end [when] you move the picture of us from the wedding,” Zegen said. “They go, ‘Does that mean that they got back together?’ … But just because you displayed it it doesn’t necessarily mean we got back together. Just, there’s a lot of love there. I don’t know, we’ll find out in the reboot.”
Your move, Prime Video.
Watch the full Awards Spotlight conversation between Brosnahan and Zegen above.