Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, Amazon Prime Video; Warner Bros. Television; ABC Family Original Productions, Disney-ABC
Amy Sherman-Palladino grew up in a household of creatives. Her father was a stand-up comedian. Her mother was an accomplished ballet dancer. Amy originally trained to be a dancer, but in 1990 she skipped a callback for a role in a touring production of Cats to take a staff rotation writing position on Roseanne.
Her new position was part of star and producer Roseanne Barr's campaign to get more female voices onto her show. In 1992, she and writing partner Jennifer Heath were nominated for an Emmy for the Rosanne episode, “A Bitter Pill to Swallow" in which the star's teenage daughter, Becky, began taking birth-control pills. She wrote on the show for 4 seasons, met and married her husband, fellow writer, Dan Palladino, and followed the success with a brief stint on Veronica’s Closet.
After ten years in the business, Sherman-Palladino was ready for a show of her own and landed a meeting with Susanne Daniels, who was head of The WB at the time. Fledgling for forty-five minutes of unsuccessful pitches, Amy spontaneously began describing an idea about a mother and daughter close enough in age that they acted more like siblings. The simple concept won over the team and turned into the comedy-drama Gilmore Girls (2000-2007). My love for this show was immediate – the pilot, the theme song, the town, the townspeople, the obscure pop-culture references zinging off every set and sidewalk, and of course Sherman-Palladino’s signature rapid-fire dialog, brought to pitch-perfection by Lauren Graham’s adored Lorelai Gilmore. Sherman-Palladino and her husband left the series after six seasons due to a contract dispute. They rejoined for the follow-up four-episode revival on Netflix in 2016.
The next show Sherman-Palladino created was Bunheads (2012) featuring Broadway star Sutton Foster. The well-received ballet-themed comedy also took place in a quirky small town following the lives of young dancers finding their place in the world, along with their teacher, Michelle (Sutton Foster). I am STILL not over being robbed of a second season. See an earlier post to fully swim in the fangirl rage.
While I was still reeling over the loss of Bunheads, Sherman-Palladino moved on to create what would be her most acclaimed series to date, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-present). She explained the show concept: "I wanted to do a story about a woman who thought she'd scored...She'd gotten it all, and then, bam, it all falls apart. And in falling apart, she discovers an ambition and a need to speak, and a voice that she just frankly didn't know was there." The series also employed her signature rapid-fire lines, a device inspired by her father, a Borscht Belt comedian, a style known as well for its speedy dialogue and delivery, which comes through in Mrs. Maisel’s stand-up routines.
Amy Sherman-Palladino has made a career out of creating powerful and poignant roles for women on television. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, earned 20 Emmy nominations in 2020 alone. Sherman-Palladino became the first woman to win two Emmy Awards for both writing and directing in the same year. She has also received the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television from the Producers Guild of America. She and her husband/production partner, Daniel Palladino, landed a multi-year deal with Amazon, with Mrs. Maisel Season Four anticipated drop December 2021.
Her Advice to Writers:
I don't believe that bullshit, "If you love something, let it go". If you love it, stay there and make sure no one else fucks it up.”
More of her thoughts on writing below:
Fall in Love with Your Story “I don’t believe you should go into any project with a shot in hell of succeeding if you have a specific zeitgeist desire. It just can’t work. You have to fall in love with your story and what you want to tell people, and live in a world that you’re gonna enjoy for a while, and hope to drag some people along with you.”
What a Story's Really About “Always make the big small and the small big. It’s not about the plot, it’s about the people… The truth of what the characters are feeling has to be the most important thing you put out there.”
Create Characters Who Need to Grow “Sometimes people who have the biggest journey to take are the most interesting characters in the end.”
Have Some Kind of Plan “We’ve always made sure that, anything we pitch, we can see at least five years in our heads. If you can’t, there’s nothing worse in life than, “We have a great pilot and then it’s like, now what do we do?”
Believe in Your Work “People make terrible mistakes in the fear of being fired. And it’s better to be fired than to compromise on something that is going to destroy what you had in the first place.”