Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino have become known for their rapid-fire dialogue across beloved series like Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
So when it came time to make their latest series Étoile, now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video, Palladino veterans like Luke Kirby, Yanic Truesdale and Gideon Glick were familiar with the duo’s distinctive approach and beats, but newcomers to their writing like French stars Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou de Laâge were challenged by the “rhythm” of the language in the script.
“In English, it was difficult because you needed a certain rhythm and a certain pace that you didn’t have to start with,” Gainsbourg told The Hollywood Reporter at Étoile‘s New York premiere last month. “It took some energy to understand that that was my goal and understand that the words were important.”
And de Laâge shared that she and Gainsbourg helped with some of the French dialogue.
“Sometimes I, with Charlotte Gainsbourg, we’d tell them OK that’s not very good in French or the translation is not good because the rhythm for our comedy in English and French is not the same — we don’t have the same music,” de Laâge told THR at the premiere.
De Laâge, who shared that she was a “huge fan” of Maisel, added, “Amy and Dan have a very special way to write and when you’re an actor, it’s very interesting to try to find a way to be natural and free in this writing.”
Though the Palladinos have said the bilingual element of the series was challenging, specifically translating their writing into French, they embraced the “fun” of a larger, transatlantic canvas for their storytelling.
“It just gave us a lot of story,” Sherman-Palladino said of the decision to have Étoile include ballet companies in New York and France, adding that living in France for a while was also part of the appeal.
“It gave us the old and the new. It gave us a historical ballet company that goes back to the courts of the kings and sort of a young upstart in the New York City ballet — it’s sort of based on Paris ballet, New York City ballet, so it gave us a lot of tradition, different kinds of bureaucracy, different kinds of issues and yet similar problems in trying to keep the art form alive. It was just more fun.”
And Gainsbourg embraced the unknown in the form of her first U.S. series, which involved the film actress signing on for a project in which she didn’t know the ending.
“It’s my first series in America, so it’s a big thing for me. It felt exciting. Amy and Dan’s work was exciting,” Gainsbourg told THR. “They answered all of the questions I had. I was nervous having only read four episodes out of eight. I’d never been engaged with something without knowing where the story was going. But they did explain what their vision was and it was reassuring enough. They were very, very precise.”
As for Kirby, who was “flattered” by the opportunity to co-lead the series with Gainsbourg after working with the Palladinos on Maisel and found that past experience “very helpful,” the showrunners said that his starring role is the culmination of a long-in-the-works plan.
“We’ve known him so long. We actually talked to him years ago about, ‘We want to do something for you.’ Usually people like us are lying and forget about it. Years did go by, but we finally did this role and found the right part. He was possibly doing something else but we said, ‘Get out of it. We don’t care what it is,’” Palladino said, before joking, “He was kind enough to respond to our threats.”
All eight episodes of Étoile‘s first season are now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.
