Rachel Brosnahan: ‘So many women have to answer for the actions of s***ty men’

As first proper starring roles go, Rachel Brosnahan’s was a good one. Playing a jilted-housewife-turned-standup in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, she’s won an Emmy, two Golden Globes and a whole heap of critical adulation. When the show first aired in 2017, she was excited to talk about it – about its skewering of sexist stereotypes; its refusal to paint women as adversaries; the abundance of female talent both in front of and behind the camera; how damn funny it was. “And then nearly every interview I did,” says Brosnahan now, “was about the allegations against Kevin Spacey. And when I answered that question, that became the headline, and then trumped or even erased the conversation about this extraordinary show. And that was a real shame.”

Spacey had nothing to do with Mrs Maisel, and Brosnahan had nothing to do with him. She had appeared in House of Cards for three seasons – as a sex worker whose dreams of a better life end in a shallow grave in New Mexico – but she never had a single scene with Spacey, who played corrupt congressman Frank Underwood. When news broke in 2017 of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct against him, Brosnahan had to say over and over again that she had only met him twice.

“I think so many women have to answer for the actions of s***ty men,” says the 30-year-old, speaking over the phone from her home in New York. “And first and foremost, those men, and other men who have taken similar actions, should have to answer for them. I’m grateful for this moment of collective reckoning surrounding so many of these issues that have been kept in the dark for such a long time.”

Hearing Brosnahan talk, you can see why she specialises in playing women who find their voice and learn how to wield it. Her new film, the slow-burn crime drama I’m Your Woman, is no different. She plays Jean, a Seventies housewife whose life is upended twice: first when her criminal husband Eddie hands her a baby and declares it hers, and then when he disappears, forcing her to go on the run with a stranger called Cal (Arinze Kene).  

“Jean, when we meet her, is pretty numb,” says Brosnahan. “She’s compartmentalised the trauma and is just trying to make it through every day.” She found herself drawn to Jean. “You hear her so many times say that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and she feels incapable, and then frame by frame coming into her own power in a way that felt different from most films that I’ve seen, where that journey is sped up for the sake of drama.”

The film skewers the macho trappings of its genre – “All these men and all their guns,” says one character with a weary sigh – without ever feeling too shallow or cynical, like it is slapping a Hillary Clinton bumper sticker on a getaway car. Though Jean is the victim of a patriarchal society, she is also the beneficiary of a racist one, and the film never forgets that. When she and Cal, who is black, are spotted sleeping in their car by a police officer, he assumes that she must be in danger. “That scene holds up a mirror to this moment and so many of the conversations that we’re having right now,” says Brosnahan. “I appreciate the subtle but incredibly potent dynamic between Jean and Cal. Jean has a slow and nonlinear awakening. And that is how most awakenings happen.”

The film and TV industry is in the midst of its own slow awakening. As people of colour and those of other marginalised identities have carved out more space to tell their own stories, the debate over who can and should play certain roles has ramped up. But it is not always clear-cut. In Mrs Maisel, Brosnahan plays a Jewish woman who jokes about mezuzas and shiksas and Yom Kippur. “For Christmas, a gentile would get a bike as a reminder that their parents love them,” she says during one standup set. “For Hanukkah, we would get socks as a reminder that we were persecuted.”

One of the few non-Jewish people in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, Brosnahan was so immersed in Jewish culture growing up that she came home from school one day and asked her dad what her Hebrew name was. But, of course, that doesn’t make her Jewish. And she knows that. “I appreciate those conversations so much,” she says, “and they certainly made me think and helped me grow. I’ve only really spoken about where and how I grew up because I was asked a lot, ‘What did you do to prepare for this role?’ and [my childhood] was a basis for education. It just meant that I had to do less research right off the bat, because I was aware of what certain words meant and certain traditions. But it doesn’t give me the lived experience of someone who is Jewish. And I acknowledge that. And I respect and appreciate the conversation surrounding who should and can play what roles and when.” There’s a long pause. “Yeah.”

I start to say something, but Brosnahan has one more thing to add. “I have a great deal of respect and love for the Jewish community,” she says, “and my only goal in playing any role that is similar or different from me is to bring the character to life with as much love and respect and joy as I can muster.”

In the early days of Brosnahan’s career, there wasn’t much scope for bringing characters to life. Before House of Cards – which was only supposed to be a couple of lines, but she so impressed the director that her character was given a name and a three-season arc – her CV mostly comprised one-episode parts in shows like Gossip Girl and CSI: Miami. She played a lot of what she calls “wide-eyed chicks”. Did that frustrate her? She laughs. “At that point, I was grateful to have any job. Anything that helped pay the rent, and meant I didn’t have to waitress another day, felt like such a gift. Certainly, as I’ve had the privilege of experience and some success, I have looked to grow far beyond wide-eyed chicks.” Another laugh. “There are so many other kinds of chicks that we have yet to see on screen.”

Midge Maisel is one of them. Nervy and hyperactive, she fires out words like a machine gun does bullets. Anyone within heckling distance is fair game; diatribes and witticisms pour out of her rat-a-tat-tat. Brosnahan doesn’t speak quite at Midge’s breakneck speed, but she has the same judicious directness. If I hadn’t read that she was obsessed with wrestling at school, I would have imagined her leading the debate team. It’s a surprise to learn, then, that she gets almost debilitatingly anxious on set. After spending the day playing a gutsy go-getter, she would go home from Mrs Maisel in tears every night.

“I know I’m not alone,” she says, “in feeling like the things I’m most passionate about come with the most anxiety.” Even three seasons in, she still gets anxious. What is she so afraid of? “Failure,” she says, without hesitation. “It’s always fear of failure. Fear of disappointing people and letting them down, but more than anything, fear of disappointing myself and letting myself down. There is a gift, when you’re first starting out, in the bar being extraordinarily low. And there’s an increased pressure that comes with success, to continue to be successful in everything you do.”

Not that this would even be possible, she adds. “I believe that if you’re taking bold risks and big swings, failure is inevitable and shouldn’t be feared but rather embraced.” There’s a pause. “That doesn’t make it any easier when it happens! But I’m working hard to remember that when fear and anxiety feel overwhelming, and working hard to be motivated by that fear rather than paralysed by it.” And how’s that going? She laughs. “It’s day by day.”

If that all sounds a little exhausting, Brosnahan insists that it is worth it. “As someone who can be a bit shy publicly, and feel quite vulnerable being myself in a public space, it’s the best free therapy – you get to dig deep inside yourself and explore all the different pieces that make you you, and then explore all the things that feel foreign and strange. You grow enormously from spending time developing and understanding and empathising with someone who’s different from you. And with that growth comes resilience. I do feel braver after playing brave women.”

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’s fourth season was supposed to start filming in June, but the pandemic put a stop to that. Last month, production tentatively started back up again, but that has so far amounted to little more than a hat fitting. In the meantime, Brosnahan’s been executive-producing a new Amazon comedy special, Yearly Departed. It’ll see a handful of female comedians – Tiffany Haddish, Sarah Silverman, Ziwe, Patti Harrison, Phoebe Robinson and Brosnahan herself – bid adieu to a s***ty year.

It’s one of the first projects she’s been a part of where women occupy nearly every position of leadership. “And so looking around the Zoom room in our production meeting felt radical in a way that it shouldn’t anymore,” she says. “I wish it wasn’t still so special. I wish we didn’t notice anymore.”

We are accustomed, she adds, to it being the other way around. “Any woman or underrepresented group knows what it feels like to be the only one in the room. To feel like you have to fight for your needs and your safety and your well-being, but also to feel like you have to be cautious in the way that you do that. And we’re so used to looking around rooms filled with white men and not thinking twice about it. And that’s why it feels so radical to be in a room where that’s inverted. Since moving into producing, I have more say and more control over what those rooms look like.” 

She is determined to use that power for good. “I am trying every day,” she says, “to be a part of the change that I want to see.”

I'm Your Woman is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now