Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Bunheads creator Amy Sherman-Palladino continues to make smart, witty, fun and incredibly enjoyable TV with the release of Étoile (now on Prime Video). Co-created with her husband Daniel Palladino, Étoile is centred around two struggling ballet companies, one in New York and one in Paris, that decide to do a talent swap to try to reinvigorate interest and hopefully make some money.
Led by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel alum Luke Kirby, along with Gideon Glick, and French talents Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou de Laâge, in addition to Gilmore Girls star Yanic Truesdale, Étoile has that signature Sherman-Palladino tone, but with an interesting immersion into the international world of ballet. If you’re thinking filming a series in two countries and two languages is a lofty goal, the show’s creators agree, but they pulled it off with great success.
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Watch Étoile on Prime Video April 24 with a 30-day free trial, then $9.99/month
The very first scene of the series shows a young dancer, Susu Li (LaMay Zhang), following along to a video of a ballet class on a cellphone. Her mom is a cleaner at the Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York and records classes for her daughter to learn from, at the studio at night, while she’s working.
As the story progresses we meet Cheyenne Toussaint (de Laâge), a strong-willed French dancer who’s among the talents swapped to New York City.
It was the connection between Susu and Cheyenne that began the journey to create Étoile.
“The relationship between Cheyenne and the little girl, Susu, was a germ of an idea that we were mulling, a ballerina who is a little contentious, has her own way of doing things and is constantly searching for the meaning in what … her life has become,” Sherman-Palladino told Yahoo Canada. “A very un-motherly person finds it in mentoring this little girl.”
“That was the initial thing, way, way, way back when Cheyenne wasn’t even French then, she was American. And then when the idea of the swap and the two companies … came into it, that’s when it all started to blossom out from there. And that’s when we decided, ‘Hey, here’s how we make sure that Luke Kirby has to look us in the eye for the next few months, and he can’t go anywhere.'”
A different kind of mother-daughter relationship
Gilmore Girls fans fell in love with the mother-daughter relationship between Rory and Lorelai, and Sherman-Palladino gave us another endearing mother-daughter duo in Étoile, between Cheyenne and her mom Bruna (Marie Berto). But their bond isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy like Lorelai and Rory. They’re very direct with each other, almost harsh, but it’s a quality they both share.
Bruna is the complete opposite of a prima ballerina, but you get an understanding of why Cheyenne is so committed, not just to ballet, but to everything she’s interested in.
“We wanted her to come from a background where the mother had no interest in the arts, very blue collar, the arts were frivolous,” Sherman-Palladino explained. “Because there was a feeling that it opened Cheyenne up to thinking about the world, thinking about the world around her, thinking about things other than just ballet.”
“It allowed her [to] think bigger, which also allowed her to be even more judgmental of people who don’t think big and don’t commit as much, and don’t commit to everything. No matter what she does, she’s 100 per cent in. … She just doesn’t understand a world where people aren’t like that. She suffers no fools gladly, and so does her mother. So there’s an interesting dynamic there between what she learned and how she put it into her life, which is so different from her mother’s life.”
Sherman-Palladino also highlighted that de Laâge and Marie Berto together are a great pairing.
“They should have a sitcom, a French sitcom,” she said. “Just follow those two around all day long.”
“The talent that we got to harness in France was unbelievable and Marie and Lou together are just, they’re just golden.”
Warning: Spoilers for Étoile included beyond this point
Surprise ‘Spring Awakening’ reunion
Quirky characters are also Sherman-Palladino’s specialty, and while that applies to many characters in Étoile, possibly the best example of that is Glick’s character Tobias Bell. He’s a New York choreographer who always has his headphones on, or around his neck, and has a unique way of working through his dances, including dancing in the middle of a busy New York street.
When he moves to Paris, it just feels like chaos for him without his routine, and a significant source of his stress is not having access to his Crest toothpaste.
But Glick actually started in the writers room for Étoile, and as Tobias developed in the story, it was clear that Glick was the best person for the role.
“We worked with Gideon as an actor on Maisel … and he was really interested in writing, and he gave us a couple of samples, and … we really liked them,” Palladino explained. “And he’s such an intelligent actor, we knew that giving him his first writing job was going to be a bargain for us.”
“And then, as we had created this character, … it was slowly dawning on us that it’s Gideon. And as we were talking about the character in the room, … we would look over at Gideon, and I know Gideon was kind of looking at us like, ‘You haven’t said anything, but am I?’ It naturally evolved. … Through osmosis I think we wrote it for him. He may have controlled our minds.”
While Étoile has a lot of beloved guest stars, including Kelly Bishop who played Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, a particularly exciting cameo is Jonathan Groff, who starred alongside Glick in the musical Spring Awakening. Groff plays Tobias’ estranged boyfriend and the two have an interesting, and hysterical moment of reconnection later in the season.
“We knew Jonathan … and it just seemed perfect to bring those two together,” Palladino said. “They had not acted across from each other since Spring Awakening, so they were really, really excited.”
Canadian collaborators Luke Kirby, Yanic Truesdale
As much as we love watching projects led by Palladino and Sherman-Palladino, it’s clear that actors love working with them just as much, if not more, with many of them returning to collaborate with the duo on multiple projects.
That includes two Canadian talents Luke Kirby, who’s from Hamilton, Ont., and Yanic Truesdale, who played the beloved character Michel Gerard on Gilmore Girls, who’s from Montreal.
“Luke, … we wanted him to be the lead and we wanted to spend more time with him, … and I just think he’s so incredibly talented, and there’s so many things that he can do that we didn’t get to explore on Maisel because Lenny Bruce was a very specific character,” Sherman-Palladino said.
For Truesdale, Palladino and Sherman-Palladino were excited about being able to write a character for the actor that was “completely different” from Michel.
“We have somebody who we know how to write for, we know how funny he is, we know all these things that he could do, and he speaks French,” Sherman-Palladino said. “And we put him next to Charlotte and the two of them just clicked immediately.”
But Sherman-Palladino also highlighted that as she works with many stars from her shows, it’s in the back of her mind to bring them back for a new role in another story.
“Whenever you work with great people, one of the sad things about shows ending is the people that you look forward to writing for, … I looked forward to writing for Rachel [Brosnahan], I looked forward to writing for Alex [Borstein]. And when you don’t get to do that anymore, it feels like you’ve lost a limb or something,” she said. “In the back of your mind you’re kind of like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to get them back in. … It’s always there.”
