- 5 weeks ago
'Étoile' showrunners Amy-Sherman Palladino and Daniel Palladino chat with THR's Beatrice Verhoeven to talk all about the Prime Video series during a THR Frontrunners conversation.
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00:00it's a funny weird strange but incredibly dedicated soulful world and we just sort of
00:07wanted to show all of it so that people don't think that ballet is this weird rarefied you've
00:13got to have a you know tuxedo and a monocle to go we're going to welcome to the stage
00:23amy sherman paladino and daniel paladino i'd love to start off with um you know ballet takes center
00:34stage no pun intended in its wall um this isn't your first time that you've created a show based
00:41on the art you explore the subject in your 2013 series bunheads and one of your gilmore girls
00:46supporting character was a ballet teacher what made you want to dive deeper or even deeper into
00:52the world of ballet i was a dancer uh supposed to be a dancer and so i grew up in that world and
00:59most of the stuff that i've seen uh done around the ballet world it's usually like oh they're so
01:05pretty and fluffy on stage and then then off stage they push each other off of buildings and murder
01:10each other which which happens especially at abt no i'm kidding um it it it's it's just that there's
01:17so much more to it than that you know they're they're actually a really interesting group of
01:22people they're you know they're the it's it's the one art form where you're guaranteed to never make
01:27a dime you're just gonna die poor and then your career will be over at 25 and you'll be teaching
01:32pilates and you've spent your entire life in class training giving up everything to because it's just
01:39for the pure love of this art form and i i find that miraculous and they're also they're just like a
01:46kind of a weird they're culty kind of like they're like puppies and they they kind of crawl on each
01:52other a lot they're always like touching each other and rolling around on the ground and doing weird
01:56push-ups and like you know they never rest you know they're always like stretching or throwing girls
02:01up in the air you'll walk in and like they're doing like four or five perilous things they just
02:06they're just like athletes and they're balancing it's like it's like traveling with a circus it's a funny
02:11weird strange but incredibly dedicated soulful world and we just sort of wanted to show all of
02:18it so that people don't think that ballet is this weird rarefied you've got to have a you know tuxedo
02:25and a monocle to go you know it's like it's that's actually not the world it's very it's very athletic
02:33and energetic and exciting and strange and mysterious and romantic and aromatic very aromatic
02:40very very scented so i just i just think that there was just a lot that we wanted to put out
02:48there because of our great admiration for dancers daniel i see you nodding along to amy's words
02:54it's what's kept the marriage together this long so
02:57that's uh i was curious that's just the way it is look we've been doing a lot of these panels so
03:05at this point it's like all all gloves are off tonight it's sort of like it's our last one it's
03:09like fantastic news for me i'd love to talk to you guys about writing the script um specifically for
03:16this show you i believe wrote the script in english and then it was translated to french for the french
03:23speaking parts is that right yeah because we don't speak french that would be weird doing it the
03:27other way accurate yeah i mean we and we went through many translators we we kind of we we use
03:33charlotte gainsberg and um and ludolage mainly as our judges because they knew they knew they were
03:40familiar with what we had mazel and all that stuff and gilmore girls i think and they knew about the
03:46snap and they really wanted to do that they were really interested in in doing the the and doing it
03:51in english which neither one of them have really done comedy in english like that before but
03:55or comedy we kept getting we kept getting head shaking it's like how about these translations
04:01like no no oh you're not going to be happy no this is not that would not make you happy
04:07their worst thing they said is like well it's the words i was like well okay it's like getting notes
04:14from a network yeah well there's words on the page yeah it's like we wanted to be more than the words so
04:19we finally found this really great lady um who they had both worked with before who's really
04:25really knows both languages uh inside and out so so we and she was on set with us and uh you know she
04:33was with us with us the whole way so there was something funny about also the french scenes like
04:38charlotte up against uh the sort of cultural minister because in france the person who's in charge of the
04:45ballet that person uh reports to the cultural minister who is in the government so it's a
04:52different kind of job so she's dealing with these ballet is government subsidized in france what's
04:59that like they got health care and paid leave and retirement they go on strike they go on strike
05:07want to yeah so we you know so we we we wanted to make sure it had the snap and then we also wanted
05:13to make sure that it it didn't feel false to a french audience that we were just sort of doing
05:18americanisms and all that stuff and some of our idioms that we had translated very either didn't
05:24translate or translated very strangely into french they don't have a lot of this they don't have a lot
05:29of the sayings that we have here no we need a lot of sayings in america and france are like there's
05:34only one word for it why do you need four words for the same thing it's like i was like well i don't
05:38know you're you're right but welcome to america more more more you mentioned lou who um learned to
05:49speak english uh for the show did she learn she said she wasn't a fluent she was not she still isn't
05:58she's so lovely i love lou delage so much especially since i kept forgetting in my
06:04excitement of working with her because anytime you got to work with lou it was like a really fun day
06:08because she's sort of like unlike her character she's she's a very smiley sunny positive excited
06:14person and uh i would run up to her and start giving direction you know really fast with the
06:20hand gestures and then we like like halfway through like oh god she literally does not understand a word
06:25i'm saying to her and she's just waiting for me to shut up and she's just gonna go back and try
06:29something else you see the lou delage glaze kind of curtain down just she sort of starts to stare
06:34off above your head she did mention um in an interview that you know obviously your shows are
06:45they have a rhythm to it and you know for someone who isn't a fluent english speaker that's probably
06:52especially daunting so i was curious how those conversations went with lou how you prepared her
06:57for that kind of cadence of the dialogue she she worked i think both she and charlotte but
07:02especially lou did a lot of work with that same translator i mean hours and hours on each scene
07:09she she worked like with her coach uh before table reads so like she needed the script for a table read
07:17two weeks before the table we're not known for early scripts so it was quite the challenge for us
07:22we hold on to information but she needed it because she wanted to come to the table
07:27you know some people go to table reads and they treat it like nothing and they do the whole thing
07:31you know eating a bagel and you can't understand a word they say but you know
07:34don't you let alex hear you say that but some people work really really hard and this
07:42this cast and i think a lot of it is because of the two language thing like
07:46a i think the the the non-english speakers really wanted to you know come come up and be as as good
07:55as the english speakers and i think all of our english speakers really wanted to support our first
08:00it's a great cast like these people are unbelievably generous and kind to each other and they were really
08:05supportive of each other so like nobody showed up at table read and didn't give 100 because that
08:10would affect somebody else so charlotte and and lou they worked really hard at everything at every
08:16step of the and and lou had to go to ballet class and pilates and it was just like there was like so
08:22much that went into this part that she had to do god love her i'd love to talk more about the casting
08:28because you have um actors who you've worked with before luke herby and getting like for example
08:33then we talked about hiring english and french speakers but then you also had to hire
08:37dancers and actors who can dance and vice versa i'd love for you guys to kind of talk about how
08:45you found that balance in the casting process it took forever we we had we had to put first for the
08:51dance companies we had to basically put 20 professional grade dancers in each country
08:58that took a long time we're basically in america we luckily we we got to borrow tyler peck and
09:05unity phelan and we had robbie fairchild and we had um benjamin uh benjamin freemantle we had some
09:12real pros but we had to like really just fan out and see this person who was tired from the royal
09:20ballet would they like to come and do this we tried to give all of them something to say at some
09:24point um because they wanted to and we wanted to to do that for them so they all show is about
09:30them it's about the dancers it's it's not a dance show it's really about them and their lives and
09:35their work and so when we went to them first to say we come in peace we're not nobody's going to be
09:41pushing anybody off of a building or throwing up in a bathroom we wanted them to understand that we
09:46wanted there weren't window dressing to us they were real characters we got to know them and their
09:51voices so that when we gave them dialogue it was something that was akin to who they were and and
09:56we could create these characters and these moments for the dancers we had one role that was supposed
10:02to be the premier ballerina who was cheyenne we were not going to find a dancer who could take on
10:08a role as complex as cheyenne i mean it just that just was not going to happen and we didn't want to
10:13compromise that so the acting came first so we did cast lou who was not a dancer but as amy said
10:20because dancers basically give off being a dancer by walking sitting in a certain way they don't do
10:28anything like that like normal people they they they are they they sit differently they stand differently
10:32they walk differently so they went through very very rigorous training but we had a dance doubles who
10:39came in who we credit love uh we we give a big credit to and we have our techniques our behind the
10:46scenes techniques that hopefully i know i know a lot of people didn't know that cheyenne was not a
10:52dancer so yeah i mean that was always part of the plan but you know thais who plays uh michi is a
11:00dancer she's a young dancer and most all the other dancers who were speaking we had and all that and
11:05our guy al was you know he was a real dancer so we had two yeah david alvarez who was bernardo in the
11:12west side story that was out a few years ago and we saw him when he was 14 in billy elliott
11:17and now he's which is great he's hard he just turned 30 yeah and he's this he's big tall and
11:24handsome now yeah i'm like oh you are adorable when i oh okay and he found time to be in the army for
11:29four years i mean it's just like an incredible he's a really interesting guy i mean the weird thing
11:33is uh gael was not in the show but we loved west side story and we we were looking for like
11:39at least two or three ringers that we could have as actors who also did their own dancing
11:46so we did a zoom with him just to sort of meet him and he's such an interesting guy because he
11:51is that guy he's he was you know he was on broadway he won a tony then he danced at abt for a while then
11:57he joined the army then he backtracked across mexico for two years and then every time i see a picture
12:02of him he's like standing on a camel or he's like digging a hole somewhere and like he's you know it's
12:07like he's swinging from it's i i don't like you know i i start every text to him is like you know
12:12what country are you in where are you he's just that kind of guy like his character yeah yeah and
12:16so we thought well that's kind of a fun character and do you mind if we steal your entire life
12:20for our own evil purposes and i don't know if he knew we were serious until he saw the script but
12:26he's a he's a love amy i was curious you obviously mentioned um that you are a ballet dancer yourself
12:33was was was was was was was belly dancer that's exactly yeah that's what she was professionally
12:39for many many years you heard it here guys and she's going to give you two minutes of that at
12:44the end of this panel that is the grand finale of this yes i was curious you know having that
12:49background what it was like for you to direct episodes um that combined film and dance especially
12:55the live performances in the show a it just all of my directing i think comes from my dancing
13:00right so even when i'm not directing dancers i it's it's it's music to me like i hear a beat and
13:08i hear a rhythm and it's why it's why my steadicam guy goes home very tired every day because i just
13:14don't i i'm like but you can just strap it on and walk around why do you want to be on the dolly for
13:18get up man so i sort of feel that's sort of how i think of things anyhow but you know a lot of it is
13:25is uh just understanding things like dancers are not machines they have a certain amount of takes
13:33in them and then they're going to go down and we have to be ready they cannot be on our clock we have
13:38to be on their clock little things like hey we're going to build sprung floors and everything that's
13:43right none of these dancers are getting injured on our watch i'm not sending anyone back to new york
13:47city ballet broken so it's like there's there's things like that that just basic like you just
13:52the the physicality of it you understand the directing i think it just it it's also you know
13:59when you have these creatures who can do these otherworldly things while you go in close sometimes
14:06you want to see the otherworldly things i mean there's a reason they shoot frotistero head to toe
14:11because you're cutting off some of the best stuff when you go in uh too tight i'm not a tight gal
14:18anyhow i don't think anyone older than 12 should have a close-up i think you should just back that
14:22camera up because like as soon as 13 happens like back it up baby let's go let's go but i think that
14:28the fun of dance is to see the joy and the freedom and the beautiful technique and the wonderful and be
14:33ready for the jump because the jump's going to go higher than then the camera's going to be ready for
14:36it and he's going to do that jump three times great the fourth time he's going to start to get tired and
14:40so it's just it's those sorts of things that sort of get stuck in your brain i find it interesting
14:45you talked about being cognizant of like the dancers because i interviewed gideon glick who
14:49plays tobias in the show a couple weeks ago and he said it was interesting for him acting among
14:55dancers because he didn't want to mess up he wanted to be very conscious of how much energy they had and
15:02every time he would mess up they'd have to start over and start over and start over so that was a very
15:07interesting thing for him yeah because he had a lot of scenes where he was choreographing things
15:12and they were and some of these things where they were doing very very difficult things so
15:16but you know gideon gideon's a broadway gideon again gideon we saw gideon on broadway when he was 17
15:22okay all these children it's getting worse we late we basically groomed to become our actors
15:27we're the creepy grooming yes actor people amy do you see that 15 year old let's keep
15:33the 12 year old and the 15 year old come with us boys we're going to give you a card don't call it
15:40till you're 18 i was curious sorry our lawyer's here so maybe you can help us with that
15:47what was the most challenging role to write most challenging character in tv writing we don't really
15:57have the luxury of of like sitting back and going i really don't know what that person's going to say
16:01so i i don't know if anyone's really challenging we come from the school of 22 episodes and in 22
16:07episodes there's just blind panic every day and you just keep going and you hope some of the words
16:11end up in an order that makes sense we spent a long time developing it before we wrote anything
16:18just thinking about it the characters on the boards traits of how they would interact with each other
16:24we go through outlines and drafts and it's all it's all a process like it's you know nothing's
16:31born in the very beginning it's all just it just just dates just dates just dates so and in tv it
16:36continues you know like you learn about people when you do the first episode and you start changing
16:42what you're doing in the second because you realize this person's good at this this person's
16:45bounces off that person great like a mazel we did not anticipate really midge and susie spending
16:53having so much on-screen time like you know we but we saw from the very beginning oh for some
16:58reason alex borstein we saw it when they read together mesh and you know it's which they
17:05shouldn't because they are not at all the same person there is literally nothing similar about the
17:12two of them at all which they would say constantly on a daily basis but they just really just worked
17:19so well so well together so thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk about it well season
17:23one appreciate it of course thank all of you for coming thank you for coming out
17:29you
17:39you
17:39you
17:39you
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