‘Gilmore Girls’ Showrunners Talk New Show ‘Étoile,’ ‘Bunheads’ & Potential for More Stars Hollow (Exclusive)
If you’re a big fan of Gilmore Girls or the Emmy-winning comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel, then you’re probably very familiar with the names Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino — the husband-wife writing/producing team behind some of the best television of the past three decades. If not, you should be! Without the smart, hilarious and quirky dialogue — not to mention the also-smart and quirky characters — shows like Gilmore Girls, which is one of the most watched (and re-watched) shows available to stream, would not have stood the test of time.
Dan and Amy are back with a new drama series, Étoile, premiering April 24 on Prime Video. The show follows the dancers and staff of two renowned ballet companies who decide to swap their most talented stars. This is not the first time the pair has set a show in the world of ballet: The 2012-13 teen drama Bunheads was also about a group of dancers and featured Broadway star (and current girlfriend of Hugh Jackman) Sutton Foster and Gilmore Girls’ matriarch Kelly Bishop.
Photo Courtesy of Prime Video
And speaking of Gilmore Girls, Yanic Truesdale — who played eternally jaded French-speaking coworker Michel — is among the cast (as is Didi Conn, who you may remember as Frenchie in the hit musical Grease). Other cast members include Mrs. Maisel’s Luke Kirby, French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and several newcomers directly imported from the dance world.
We were very excited to sit down to discuss the new show — and all things Gilmore — with the Palladinos.
What was the inspiration for this show and why did you decide to go back to the ballet world?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: Well, our business wasn’t done after we did Bunheads. We hadn’t finished it yet.
Carin Baer/ABC Family/courtesy Everett Collection
That was such a good show.
Amy: Thank you. We enjoyed that show very much. We always wanted to get back to the ballet world after that. We figured, let’s go into the life of professional ballet dancers; once they’ve grown up and they’ve made that leap, what are their lives like? So it sort of started with Bunheads, but now we’ve sort of slid into when the bunheads grow up, this is what their life is. And two of our bunheads who were little kids on the show are dancers for us [on the new show]. It’s weird to look at Matisse [Love], who was 11 [during Bunheads] and she’s now this person.
Where does the interest in ballet for you come from?
Amy: I was trained in ballet my whole life growing up until I was writing. So it was a way to monetize the experience by putting my ballet smarts to use somewhere else. Once you get into ballet, if you love it, you never stop loving it.
What was the most fun aspect of making this show?
Dan Palladino: Well, shooting in Paris doesn’t stink.
Amy: It doesn’t suck at all.
Dan: It’s a challenge because it’s much more bureaucratic. It’s a very different environment. Shooting overseas is just really, really fun. And in Paris, they’re very reverential of anything that you’re filming. I think even if you were filming a commercial, they’d be very reverential.
Amy: Yeah, they take it very seriously.
Amy Sherman-Palladino (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
The bread over there is pretty great too.
Dan: The bread is fantastic. The bread lives up to the hype.
I’ve always wondered about your work dynamic because you’re married and you also do these shows together. How do you make that work without driving each other crazy?
Dan: Maybe we don’t.
Amy: Because we do so many things on the show, there’s a lot of time where we’re not together at all. We see each other in the morning, but it’s one person’s directing and the other person’s in editing, that’s your day and you get together at dinner. We don’t write together. We break stories together in the room and then we go off into our separate corners and write. So we have enough away time that it makes the together time that much more special. And frankly, we’ve been doing it for so long now. We have such a shorthand on things. I can’t imagine not doing it this way. It’s a great dance, huh?
Dan: Yeah, very good.
I’m a huge, huge fan of Gilmore Girls, so I have to just throw in a Gilmore Girls question or two here. It has such a huge fan base that just continues to grow. Are you ever amazed by that?
Dan: Well, we’re always amazed by it.
Amy: We’re completely stunned at all times.
Scott Humbert/The CW/Courtesy Everett Collection
Dan: We are very grateful. A lot of times, we writers write something, it gets on the air and once it’s gone, it’s just forgotten. But now, we tend to run into adults who say “My 13-year-old is now watching Gilmore Girls,” and that’s been happening for years. Every year it tends to be 13.
Amy: I got a 9-year-old.
Dan: That’s really young. There are a lot of references in it that a 9-year-old is not going to get.
I’m waiting for the day that my daughter’s old enough to watch it too. She’s six, so too young yet, but now that you said someone watched it at nine, maybe I can try in three years. Why do you think it’s such a beloved timeless show?
Dan: I think Stars Hollow is a place that people want to live in. It was a more peaceful time. There were no supercomputers in people’s pockets and it was more personal experience. The humor I think bears repeating. I think we throw so much at people that you might hear something new every time you watch it, even if you’re watching it for the 40th time.
Marsha Blackburn/The CW/Courtesy Everett Collection
As someone who has watched it at least 25 times, I can agree this is very true.
Dan: We’ve also heard they’ve watched so much that they just have it on the background now, which is fine. If they’ve watched it carefully 25 times, 26 times, they can have it in the background.
Amy: I also think at the heart of it, it’s about a family, which never goes out of style. And it’s smart. An adult can watch it with their kid and they’re both going to take something else out of it, but they’re having a shared experience, which is a nice thing.
Dan: I also think a lot of it has to do with my six appearances in the show.
I didn’t know you were in there!
Dan: Yes. Six times.
My last question has to be: Will there be more Gilmore Girls in the future?
Amy: Never say never.
Dan: Only if your daughter —
Amy: Oh don’t, it’s not on her. So much pressure to put on kids. She’s six. Let her be a kid.
She’s already read a Gilmore Girls‘ kids book that they had at Target, so she knows about it!
Dan: Okay, so there you go. So we’re already indoctrinating her.
I am indoctrinating her. Yes.
Dan: Good to know. We never say never. We love the project, we love the cast.
Well I hope there will be more and if there is, I’ll be the first one watching. Thank you so much!
Étoile premiers April 24 on Prime Video. Gilmore Girls is available to stream on Netflix and Hulu.
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