One family Really Is Jewish on ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,’ the Other Is Not

By Sandi Masori

SAN DIEGO — There’s a debate raging in this country over whether an actor of one ethnicity can play a character that comes from another. This conversation is causing tension and disharmony for many shows.

There’s one set where these things aren’t an issue though, and that’s on the set of the oh-so-Jewish, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Caroline Aaron who right now is probably best known for her current portrayal of Shirley Maisel, the ex-mother-in-law of the title character.

In our conversation I found Aaron to be so sweet and fun to chat with that I almost wanted to ask if we could be friends and get coffee together the next time I was in New York.

Knowing that one of the major actors in the show was so cool, it didn’t surprise me at all when Aaron told me that the cast is really close and lacks tension.  In fact, she said, it’s the most cohesive and caring cast and crew she’s ever worked with.

What about the Jew/ non-Jew dynamic on set?  I wondered.  Ironically, all of the main actors in the Weissman family are not Jewish (that would be the titular character of Midge Maisel, and her parents Rose and Abe Weissman played by Rachel Brosnahan, Marin Hinkle, and Tony Shalhoub respectively).  All of the actors playing the Maisels are Jewish (That would be the ex, Joel Maisel played by Michael Zegan, and his parents Shirley and Moishe Weissman played by Aaron and Kevin Pollak respectively.

It’s funny, she noted, that the Maisel family is more of the post-Europe shtetl mentality in terms of their Judaism, and the Weissmans are more assimilated and decorative in their Judaism.

With Shalhoub being Lebanese and the other members of the “Weissman family” not Jewish, did the “Maisel” family have to educate the “Weissmans” on what it meant to be Jewish?

Not at all. Aaron told me.  First of all, she is also Lebanese, but Lebanese Jewish. She was raised in the South in Richmond, Va where there were only a handful of other Jews.  She and Shaloub were neighbors in LA and have been friends for 30 years.  In fact, he had been telling her that he was going to New York to shoot a series, so imagine how excited she was when the cast was expanded after the pilot and she found herself working with her friend.

Back to the question of Yiddishkeit, she noted that the other cast members are all New Yorkers and living and working for years in New York City means that you’re kinda like a Jew, whether a member of the tribe or not.  Many of the mannerisms some people associate with being Jewish like being loud, talking with hands, having a lot of energy, are also shared with Manhattanites in general.

Also, the Jews in the cast may not have been the most observant.  During the pandemic, Pollak, her on-screen husband, tried to hold a virtual Maisel cast hangout on Yom Kippur!  The other cast members quickly set him straight.

There is a background that most of the main actors share though.  And that is that they all came from the world of theatre. Aaron theorized that the producers preferred theatre-trained actors so they would be able to play big and fly by the seat of their pants.

Aaron herself was discovered by filmmaker Robert Altman while she was ushering an off-Broadway play.  He had a reading with Cher the next day and needed an actress to read across from her.

This was in 1980 when Cher was already a huge star, so it really was the opportunity of a lifetime. Aaron walked over to his house and it was just her, Altman and Cher.  She must’ve really impressed Altman because when the reading was done, he asked her if she wanted to understudy.

Following that she was brought out to LA to do a play by Wendy Wasserstein and stayed there for the next 25 years until she relocated to New York for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel seven years ago.

Being a fan of the show myself, I was curious what her favorite scenes were, both to shoot and to watch.  She said the scene with just her and Shalhoub after his heart attack was one of the ones that she most enjoyed watching.

Her favorite scene to shoot on the other hand was tied between getting to wear a mink coat in August in the Catskills and making the Coney Island wonderwheel scene from season 4.  (Parenthetically, it was also my favorite scene because I could totally see the maternal side of my family behaving in the same way and shouting sensitive medical info to each other across the Ferris wheel.)

The wonderwheel scene was shot right after the pandemic when things had just started opening up again, but there were still major restrictions.  Pre-pandemic that scene may never have existed as they had been scouting locations in the UK.  When they shot the scene, Coney Island still hadn’t reopened so the cast and crew had it all to themselves.

Sadly, at this point there is no word of an extension to what was known to be the last season for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and with the current writers’ strike there’s little chance for a spin-off, although we can hope.

You can still see Aarons elsewhere though.  She has guest starred in a couple episodes of the hit TV show Ghosts.  She also has a couple of new movies coming out.  Theatre Camp will be released in July.  She’ll also be doing a play in LA in June.  She recently did a series in Israel called Hanchi, in which she plays Henry Winkler’s wife.  The Hebrew show has been a huge hit in Israel, but so far has not been picked up to stream in the US.  And, of course, you can still see her in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, as the fifth season is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Sandi Masori is a theatre and food reviewer for San Diego Jewish World.  When she’s not interviewing celebrities for the publication, she helps people self-publish their books on Amazon, hangs out with her kids, and hunts for the best sushi in town.