Étoile is a limited series streaming on Amazon Prime as of April 24. The term étoile, French for star, has been used by the Paris Opera since the late 1800s to reward their best soloist ballet dancers, male or female.
Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the longtime married couple responsible for Gillmore Girls (2000-2007) and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023), Étoile tells the fictional story of two world-renowned ballet companies, Le Ballet National in Paris and Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York City, that agree to swap their most talented soloists in an attempt to save their institutions.
Amy Sherman was taught to tap dance by her mother Maybin Hewes from age 6, when she started writing original children’s stories to stage in their backyard with neighborhood children in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. At 7, she was enrolled in ballet classes, worked as an actress and dancer until she landed a job as a writer on the TV series Roseanne, where she met Daniel Palladino. Amy’s father Don Sherman was a stand-up comedian.
In January 2018, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won a Golden Globe as Best Comedy series after its first season premiered in 2017, followed by several Emmys in September 2018.
Husband and wife Dan and Amy, creative collaborators who write the scripts and alternate in directing the episodes, finish each other sentences, while answering journalists’ questions. They explain how they had created the short-lived TV series Bunheads (2012-2013) about a former bunhead, slang for ballerina, who wound up as a Las Vegas showgirl, and were itching to write a longer series about the dance world. They admired two “unbelievable” documentaries by “great” filmmaker Frederick Wiseman: Ballet (1995) that followed a season of the American Ballet Theatre, and La Danse (2009) about the Paris Opera Ballet, and they wanted to depict what seems like “a light and fluffy world at the front, but behind the scenes, it’s as cutthroat as an NFL football league or a soccer league.”
“Dancers are very strange people, they’re funny and weird, they’re really elite athletes. It’s like a cult, on a whole other level of intense artistry. It’s the one art form where you are guaranteed to make no money. You’re doing it purely for the love and the beauty of the art. Your career could be over in an instant, one twisted ankle and you’re out, teaching Pilates the rest of your life.”
Amy reveals that the original idea for Étoile was the trajectory of Chenelle (Lou de Laâge), inspired by her “favorite ballerina” Sylvie Guillem, whose “nickname was Mademoiselle No, because she always said no to everything: Tell me why am I doing that, explain it to me. She was very cerebral as well as very artistic, she was fabulous and very tough.”
Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of British actress Jane Birkin and French singer Serge Gainsbourg, famous as an actress and a singer in France, traveling to Los Angeles for the first time to promote the series, plays Geneviève, director of the Paris Ballet company. Her character says: “The audience is dead, so is the funding, the seats are empty. We have to fix this. We trade our top talent, Paris and New York, put fresh faces out there, get people interested in dance again.”
Luke Kirby, who portrayed legendary comedian Lenny Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, plays Jack, director of the New York ballet company. He replies to my question to describe the complicated relationship between Jack and Genevieve: “They have known each other a long time, they both are operators of ballet companies that are like families to them, and they share a deeply rooted affection for this art form. They are both conflicted by the dynamic of art and commerce, they are consistently challenged by that, and they have to walk a fine line.”
Kirby believes that the idea of swapping ballet dancers from New York and Paris is “great, culturally. Actually, the Paris and New York ballet companies did that a decade back (it happened in 2009). They’re reluctant to do it, obviously, because they’re competitors, but hopefully what comes out of it is a better world, if that’s possible.”
As a Canadian from Montreal, the actor understands the difference between his country and the United States: “When I was growing up, there was great attention paid to the arts in Canada through the government’s federal funding. And over the years it’s gotten less so, it’s become more complicated and strange. In the United States, the 20th century was an incredible time for patronage. The money that was put into the arts by families was phenomenal. It’s really remarkable, it’s a beautiful thing, and should not be forgotten. American cities have theaters and museums all along the eastern seaboard, from Providence, to Rhode Island, all the way down to Washington D.C., every city has a museum with rich art history. But the potential for neglect is always there, and if it becomes hip or cool to stop being generous, that’s a problem. Then I don’t know what we’ll do, I guess we’ll move to Paris…”
Watch the Étoile trailer, click on underlined words for additional information.