Did Ford really hire Midge for her comedic abilities?
Or was it always about using it to parlay his way into dating her?
“I’d say it was probably 60, 40,” Scott tells EW with a laugh.
Rachel Brosnahan and Reid Scott on ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’.Philippe Antonello/Prime
“60 percent political, 40 percent attraction.
And then that balance certainly tips as they go on their journey.”
“He picks that up from her instantly.
New series regular Reid Scott and Rachel Brosnahan in season 5 of ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’.Philippe Antonello/Prime
But he also took particular inspiration fromStephen Colbert.
“I hit him up for hours of Zoom conferences,” Scott says.
This isn’t Scott’s first acting job in the world of late night.
Rachel Brosnahan and Reid Scott in ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’.Philippe Antonello/Prime
OnVeep,his character Dan Egan had a stint as a morning show host on cable news.
He also starred as a late night writer inMindy Kaling’sLate Night.
But none of his characters have quite met their match in the way Gordon has with Midge.
“While that is kind of confounding at first, he starts to feed off it.
“It had crossed his mind for sure,” he says.
“In that moment, he was very full of himself because they’re number one.
He tipped a few drinks back and he saw an opening.
You get a little handsy, you get a little forward.
Which is completely inappropriate when you look at it now.”
Midge is taken aback, if also mildly amused by the moment, but not as much as Gordon.
“He’s smiling at himself,” Scott says.
“He thinks it’s so cute and clever, what he’s doing.
He went for it.
He didn’t stick the landing, but he gave it a shot.
The gauntlet is really thrown now.
This challenge ticks up a notch and he really wants to see how far he can take it.”
That extends to pursuing Midge and relentlessly asking her to go on a date.
Never mind the fact that he’s married.
While he has his own peccadillos, how much does Gordon know about his wife and her past?
“I love the fact that we leave it open to interpretation,” he says.
“There’s a bit of a mystery there.
But what we played with was that her family is incredibly powerful.
They had some influence to give Gordon his shot.
She, in some fashion, is largely responsible for him ascending to this little throne.
So, I think they know each other’s secrets.
They have a very modern relationship.”
“It’s fairly open.
They fancy themselves very hip and very cosmopolitan, very enlightened for the time.
He’s attracted to strong women, and Hedy is certainly that.
She’s a tough, driven, powerful woman in her own right.
That’s probably what attracted him to her in the first place.”
So far, Midge has held firm to resisting Gordon’s advances, despite clearly being intrigued by him.
“Oh, definitely,” Brosnahan says of whether Midge is attracted to Gordon.
“He is charming and attractive and funny, which is the most important thing to Midge.
But he’s also volatile and doesn’t seem to see in her what she sees in herself.”
But will she give in?
And if she does, would it have any chance of working?
“I don’t think so,” Scott says.
“She’s bigger than he is.
They’re clearly both ambitious and are after this brass ring.
But we’re seeing Gordon get his, and Midge still has a long ladder to climb.
My gut says that with that level of ambition, she climbs right past him.”
Adds Brosnahan: “I don’t think there’s a risk of them really crossing that line.
Midge is, at the moment we meet her in this season, far too ambitious for that.”
“He sees in her someone who’s fresh and doing something different,” he says.
“Because she’s a woman, she’s doing something that he just can’t do.
There’s no way that he can deliver the same kind of material that she has.
All men were secretly or not so secretly very intimidated by strong women at that time.
He sees that she’s got the goods.
It’s what draws him to her at first.
Nobody wants that.”
The Marvelous Mrs. Maiselis now streaming onPrime Videowith new episodes dropping every Friday through May 26.
