If you don’t know who Rachel Brosnahan is, then you better get on board! The star has been acting for quite some time: during college, she appeared in a slew of shows, including Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, Grey’s Anatomy and more.
In 2013, she starred in Netflix’s hit show House of Cards alongside Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. The brunette beauty was originally only supposed to be in two episodes, but the showrunner decided to expand her role.
Years later, Brosnahan hit the jackpot when she appeared in Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a comedy/drama that focuses on Miriam “Midge” Maisel who decides to delve into the stand-up comedy world amid her marriage troubles.
The series has become a success, and Brosnahan’s performance has earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy Series, two Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Critics’ Choice Television Awards.
Learning who Midge is took some time for Brosnahan to figure out.
“I started taking more of an outside-in approach and found that it cracked open the inside-out part for me, it was an important lesson in remaining flexible about how you work and taking it project-by-project and day by day,” she shared. “It’s been an interesting last couple of years, because that process has changed a lot. But it always involves copious amounts of research. I’m kind of a research nerd. I like to do a deep dive into the time period. It’s been a lot of period stuff over the last couple years; or there was a big, deep dive into the comedy scene, working on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. And working in the seventies, familiarizing myself with a lot of the media and what was going on politically during that time.”
Now, “it’s a hard thing to shut off after so many years of playing the character, so my internal rhythm has probably sped up a little bit, and that definitely sticks with me, but it’s also nice to be able to put a character to rest in the time that you’re not spending with them,” she said.
Season 4 premieres on February 18, and the 31-year-old is looking forward to people seeing Midge back in action — especially after she failed miserably to get her career on track in the season 3 finale.
“I think there is something about watching her hit this bottom in her life. Her entire life implodes in front of her and all of the dreams that she has for herself and for her family suddenly evaporate,” she told Hoda Kotb on the Today show. “She is forced to pick herself back up and decide whether she wants to wallow and eat ice cream forever or make something new of herself, and she finds her voice in a brand new way — a voice that was always there but in a brand new way.”
Ultimately, Brosnahan is happy that people fell in love with the show. “This job has been one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. It sounds corny, but I mean it. It’s been fun to watch people continue to develop these characters over time. I am excited by the fact that I’m still terrified. Every time I get a new script, every time I show up on set, I’m petrified. And that’s a rare gift four seasons into something,” she gushed.
