‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Star Alex Borstein on Susie’s Roast: ‘It Was Challenging’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 5 Episode 6 “The Testi-Roastial.”]

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel continues to delve deeper into Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) and Susie’s (Alex Borstein) future, and in the sixth episode, “The Testi-Roastial,” the manager is taking center stage in a roast like no other.

The episode is set in 1990, and it’s been years since Susie and Midge “broke up” for reasons that weren’t made clear until now. Mixed with flashbacks from the past and roast moments revealing what her career has come to in the years since hitting it big, viewers learn a lot about the manager who shows up late and blazed on pot. Among the roasters are Mike Carr (Jason Ralph), who knows a thing or two about Susie’s tenacity, and guest stars and Gilmore Girls alums Sean Gunn as Stewart Jones and Danny Strong as Aaron Lebowitz.

(Credit: Prime Video)

“That episode was so unique,” Borstein recalls to TV Insider. “We’d never done anything like that in a series before and it felt different from the get-go reading it.” That much is evident as the event weaves in and out of crucial moments in time, like Harry Drake (David Paymer) passing his big clients onto Susie while on his deathbed.

Perhaps the biggest nugget of information is the reason behind Joel’s (Michael Zegen) imprisonment, which was revealed in the previous episode. Discovering that Susie’s been paying the mob from Midge’s earnings, he confronts her and, in turn, cuts a deal with Nicky (John Scurti) and Frank (Erik Palladino) to pay them what they were making from Midge, so long as the mob had no control over her.

Ultimately, this choice leads to Joel’s legal issues, which become obvious when temple is disrupted and he’s taken away in handcuffs by the FBI. He hands Midge a piece of paper, explaining everything in the note, and she confronts Susie, ultimately firing her. But not all hope is lost. At the end of the roast, a tape from Midge plays, and while she addresses the elephant in the room about their “breakup,” she ultimately wants to make up with her old manager, bringing a tear to Susie’s eye.

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It’s an emotional rollercoaster that Borstein says “was also really challenging and really fun. I have a friend in the roast scene with me, Will [Sasso], who I’ve known my entire working life. So that was really fun. That made it feel that this is a real person with someone that she’s had a history with up there talking to that.”

Borstein commends the creative team for finding this way to display Susie’s success. “I thought it was so clever, too. Such a clever way for them to cover so much ground. We wanna find out what becomes of her, how do we do this?” The biggest issue, though, was keeping timelines straight, as she admits, “it was confusing.”

Less confusing though is the uplifting feeling you get that Midge and Susie’s reconciliation is on the horizon.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 5, New Episodes, Fridays, Prime Video