How Amy Sherman-Palladino's Passion for Musical Theater Inspires Her Work

From Gilmore Girls to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Exploring the Impact of Broadway on These Hit Shows

June is a lot of things (it’s the beginning of summer ☀️, Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈, Father’s Day) but one of the most important days for theater lovers occurs in June: Tony Awards day. Every year, the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League present the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Awards for excellence in theater in a lavish New York ceremony. It is an annual celebration of live theater, and the occasion, which is nationally broadcasted online and on television, always includes live samplings from the casts of currently running Broadway musicals. It’s the one night a year that the entire country celebrates–and gets to see–a New York City tradition: Broadway theater. 

Amy Sherman-Palladino, you probably well know, is the creative mind behind beloved television 📺 series Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Bunheads and more. Musical comedy (or, musical theater) is defined by rapid-fire dialogue 🗣 and the use of music 🎵as a storytelling device, and Sherman-Palladino’s work is often defined by both of these elements. So it’s fitting to know that Sherman-Palladino's deep-rooted love for theater 🎭 has had a profound influence on her work. She, along with husband Daniel, seamlessly integrate musical elements into their storytelling. Let’s deep-dive some of the connective tissue between Palladino’s work and Broadway theater. 

Broadway actors appear in their shows

Amy Sherman-Palladino’s TV shows might feel like Broadway plays and musicals because, well, the actors often are actors who have performed on Broadway and in live theater. Sherman-Palladino was herself a dancer, following in her mother, Maybin Hewes’ footsteps (or jetés, I suppose). She even got a callback on an audition for Cats on Broadway, a role she didn’t pursue because she got a writing job on the sitcom Roseanne which, arguably, launched her TV writing ✏️ career. 

Gilmore Girls is filled with actors from the Broadway world. Emily Gilmore is an iconic character, but before playing Emily, Kelly Bishop, then Carole Bishop, won a Tony Award in 1976 for Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Musical for her partly autobiographical and absolutely iconic role of Sheila in the original cast of A Chorus Line. (Every actress who plays Sheila in a production of A Chorus Line is playing a role inspired by Bishop’s own life.) After winning the Tony, she assumed the stage name Kelly, and the rest is history.

Edward Herrmann, who played Richard Gilmore, began his career in Broadway plays. He also won a Tony Award in 1976, for Best Featured Actor In a Play for his role in Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Hermann was nominated for another Tony in 1983 for Best Actor in a Play for Plenty.

Sally Struthers (Babette) was in several Broadway productions in the 1980s and 90s and has spent the last two decades performing in regional and national tours of musicals. 

After Gilmore Girls, Sherman-Palladino channeled her inner ballerina and her love of theater to write Bunheads, a show about a Broadway dancer hopeful who can’t catch a career-making break and ends up teaching ballet 🩰in a small town dance studio. Her star? Broadway darling Sutton Foster, who had earned a Tony win for Leading Actress in a Musical for Thoroughly Modern Millie in 2002. From 2002 to 2022, Foster was nominated for seven Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical, of which she won two (the second was for the revival of Anything Goes in 2011, where she performed alongside Kelly Bishop!). One of those nominations was for 2014’s Violet, a musical for which Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino actually served as producers. The show was nominated for four Tony Awards that year.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Tony Shalhoub was a Broadway veteran before appearing as the lovable mathematician-turned-theater critic ➗🗞 Abe Weissman in the TV show. He was nominated for Tonys for Best Featured Actor in a Play both in 1992 and 2013, for Best Actor in a Play in 2014, and won a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for The Band’s Visit in 2018.

Gideon Glick, who plays Alfie, magician and client of Susie Myerson, was also a bonafide Broadway star before appearing on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He’s appeared in numerous Broadway musical and play productions, including Spring Awakening and Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill A Mockingbird, for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

Many actors from Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel went on to do Broadway theater after their time on these shows. Emily Bergl (Gilmore Girls’ Francie and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Tessie) is currently starring opposite Sean Hayes in the Broadway play, Goodnight, Oscar. Dakin Matthews (Headmaster Charleston in Gilmore Girls) is currently in a Broadway revival of Camelot and appeared in Waitress from 2016 to 2017, and again in a limited run (which was taped for a feature film) in 2021. And Rachel Brosnahan, our beloved Midge Maisel, is currently starring in a limited run of the play The Sign in Sydney Brustein’s Window.

Broadway-style musical numbers for TV

It is obvious to even the casual Gilmore Girls fan that Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino have a love of theater. In Season 6, Episode 5, “We’ve Got Magic To Do,” Lorelai and Sookie attend Miss Patty’s dance recital, and the students do a rousing rendition of “Magic to Do” from the musical Pippin. It’s no surprise that Sherman-Palladino lists choreographer/director Bob Fosse as one of her influences. He directed and choreographed the original Broadway production of Pippin in 1973, which was nominated for eleven Tony Awards and won five.

More Fosse references occur in Bunheads. Watching Bunheads, it’s impossible to deny Amy Sherman-Palladino’s theater and dance influences. A show about young dancers, Bunheads often breaks the dialogue to show complete musical theater dance numbers within the episodes, which narratively support the plot (just like a musical). Sutton Foster’s Michelle has two dreams in two different episodes about auditioning. In Episode 4, “Better Luck Next Year!”, she dances and sings “Me and My Baby” from Kander & Ebb’s Chicago which was choreographed by Fosse. In Episode 10, “A Nutcracker in Paradise,” she performs “Maybe This Time” from Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret (Bob Fosse won an Oscar for directing the film version, which he also choreographed). Sherman-Palladino has said that she was inspired by Fosse’s director work as a choreographer; he applied the techniques he would to the creation of a dance on a dancer’s body and on a stage to how he moved the camera through a scene for television and film.

 And who can forget the Gilmore Girls Stars Hollow Elementary production of Fiddler On the Roof starring….Kirk Gleason? The original 1964 Broadway production won nine Tony Awards that year, and in 1971 was adapted into a movie. It has been revived on Broadway five times to date! I think for the next revival, the casting directors should definitely consider Sean Gunn for the role of Tevye. 

The Gilmore Girls Netflix revival contains an original musical for Gilmore Girls: A Year In the Life, “Summer,” and its merits are hotly contested within the fandom. But regardless of your feelings about Stars Hollow: The Musical, it is star-powered by veteran Broadway actors. Tony winners Sutton Foster, Christian Borle, and Tony nominee Kerry Butler all appear as part of the town musical. Foster and Borle, who had previously been married and used to watch Gilmore Girls when they were together, were thrilled to be a part of this special revival moment (despite being divorced at the time of filming).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has so much music and dancing, it’s hard to choose just one favorite moment (though “Your Personal Trash Can Man” is one of my favorites.)

Maisel on the whole is a dynamic show that feels like a stage musical. From the vibrant set designs to the meticulously crafted costumes, there is a theatricality to the visual presentation in every scene of the show. It mirrors the thrill and grandeur found in musical theater, where every aspect of the production is carefully orchestrated to create a visually stunning and immersive experience. 

The “secret weapon”

From a dance number at the Copacapana in Season One, to the complicated switchboard operator scene in Season Two, to a U.S.O. show and a sultry dance scene in a Miami nightclub in Season Three to the Wolford burlesque club in Season Four, gorgeous choreography appears all over The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel courtesy of Palladino’s “secret weapon,” choreographer Marguerite Derricks. Derricks has worked on countless television shows and films, but her work has been expertly showcased on Gilmore Girls: A Year In the Life, Bunheads, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. From the precise choreography of background talent floating down a New York street to full dance numbers, Marguerite Derricks is the magician behind the allure of it all.

Derricks choreographed a fabulous dance for the song “Pink Shoelaces” by the Chordettes for the telethon scene in Season Four, and it recently became a viral tiktok trend. For the premiere of the fifth and final season, New York City’s Fifth Avenue became a “pink carpet” for a day. Derricks’ Maisel dancers performed the routine outside of the classic department store Saks Fifth Avenue during the press event, and videos appeared all over the internet almost immediately. Soon, the dance was getting tons of pickup online, and dancers from TikTok to Instagram to YouTube picked up the trend. 

 Derricks not only brings amazing choreography to these shows in both the foreground and background, but she also pays careful homage to historic legendary performers through dance scenes. For the Apollo scene in Maisel featuring a revue of different performers before Midge does her comedy set, Derricks and Sherman-Palladino honored the Hines Brothers, Gregory and Maurice, who performed as a young tap duo in the 1950s and 60s. Gregory Hines became one of the most famous tap dancers in the world, and won a Tony in 1982 for Best Actor in a Musical for Jelly’s Last Jam.

Influences of Broadway legends

I’ve already mentioned Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Fosse inspiration in her shows, but there are so many Broadway theater writers, choreographers, and directors she’s been influenced by. 

Sherman-Palladino is a huge fan of Tony Kushner, his most notable work being the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Angels in America. A dream scene she wanted for Gilmore Girls was a writer’s roundtable scene at the inn featuring Kushner, Norman Mailer and Stephen Sondheim, though they settled on just having Mailer for the Season 5 episode, “Norman Mailer, I’m Pregnant!” 

Her love of Sondheim is showcased most notably through the episode title for Season 2, Episode 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, “Look, She Made A Hat,” a nod to Sondheim’s lyric from the song “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George.

And it’s difficult to ignore the influence of the musical Gypsy (lyrics by Sondheim) while watching Season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (or catch Paris Gellar scolding a classmate to “sing out, Louise!” in Gilmore Girls). The Wolford burlesque club dancers are reminiscent of the dancers in the acclaimed musical. In every number, every dancer at the Wolford has a gimmick, as the lyrics to “You Gotta Get A Gimmick” instruct a young Louise to learn before she can become Gypsy Rose Lee. Sherman-Palladino was at one point signed on to direct a film remake 📽of Gypsy; this fan is hoping it happens!

More theater pieces in the works

Whether a new Gypsy film happens or not, it doesn’t look like Amy Sherman-Palladino is shrinking away from the theater anytime soon. She is set to direct a performance of Once Upon A Mattress, the acclaimed Broadway musical, starring Tony winner Sutton Foster, during Spring 2024’s “Encores” series at City Center in New York City. And her next television project is a Prime Video series called Ètoile, a show about rival dance companies who swap their best ballet dancers.

Amy Sherman-Palladino’s penchant for blending sharp writing with memorable musical moments and drawing on theater references and talent have become hallmarks of her style, making her shows uniquely entertaining and endlessly re-watchable. I know fans are incredibly excited to see more shows from a creator who brought music and dance to our televisions in a huge and beautifully entertaining way. In the meantime, I’ve got to go learn the “Pink Shoelaces” dance!

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