LOS ANGELES, April 22 (UPI) -- Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino say their new show Étoile, premiering Thursday on Prime Video, evolved after completing their hit series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. While Maisel followed a standup comedian in the 1950s, Étoile focuses on the ballet world in the modern day.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Daniel Palladino, 65, said they were looking for another artistic world in which to set a show. Both series stream on Prime Video.
"This idea came naturally," he said of Étoile. "We did Maisel, which was set in a performing world and it felt natural to do something else in a completely different world -- performance art."
The creators previously produced another dance show, Bunheads, which premiered in 2012. That series, about a small town dance school, was canceled after two seasons at Freeform.
Sherman-Palladino, 59, and Daniel Palladino had sought ways to continue Bunheads, but were clear Étoile is not based on that show.
"We couldn't find a rich guy to come give us money to do more Bunheads," Sherman-Palladino said. "We hold grudges forever."
The pair did cast two former Bunheads actors as dancers in Étoile -- Matisse Love and Lyrica Woodruff. On the show, New York and Paris ballet companies swap dancers in an attempt to revitalize their productions and increase attendance.
"Lyrica was 16 and Matisse was 11 in Bunheads," Sherman-Palladino said. "They're all grown up and they're grown up ballerinas and now they're in our New York company."
Love and Woodruff play new characters named L.J. and Anna on Étoile. The star of the Parisian company who goes to New York is Cheyenne (Lou de Laáge).
Sherman-Palladino based Cheyenne on the legendary ballerina Sylvie Guillem. She even made Cheyenne an environmentalist, like Guillem.
Cheyenne is introduced on a boat while protesting an illegal fishing boat, and in New York insists on walking instead of taking private cars.
"Her nickname was Mademoiselle No because she just wouldn't do anything you told her to do if she didn't know why," Sherman-Palladino said. "She was just so exquisite you put up with her because you had to because she was the best."
De Laáge, 34, admired those qualities in the fictional Cheyenne too "because she's really engaged in what she loves. I'm impressed by her strength, her determination and the vocation she has."
Luke Kirby plays Jack, the head of the New York Ballet. In addition to wrangling Cheyenne, Jack also battles a new investor's demands and the ballet board's willingness to appease him.
Jack doesn't dance on Étoile but Kirby, 46, took ballet classes as part of his preparation.
"I thought it would be good to get familiarized with the language of this dance and the moves," Kirby said. "More than anything, I walked away with a greater appreciation for just how demanding ballet is on the body, how athletic it is and how much work it takes to gain some degree of grace."
Charlotte Gainsbourg, 53, plays Geneviève, Jack's Parisian counterpart. Geneviève is on board with the exchange, but even she has to deal with marketing stunts like having a live bull on her stage.
An actor in independent films like The Science of Sleep, Melancholia and I'm Not There, Gainsbourg said artistic compromise is not always negative.
"I think a tiny budget for film can make you explore," Gainsboroug said. "It's not comfortable but it doesn't mean you compromise like in the show with the bull."
As longtime fans of ballet, Étoile gave Palladino and Sherman-Palladino the chance to direct some ambitious scenes of dancers. In one scene of a Swan Lake performance gone wrong, one dancer falls and causes a pileup on stage.
"One of my proudest cinematic achievements was the pileup," Palladino said. "The girls in the front were actual stunt people who had to look like they were dancers. They're not dancers. Then the rest there were 15 actual dancers running around. They had fun. The pressure was off."
In another scene, New York Ballet instructor Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick) abandons a frustrating rehearsal. He walks out to the street and dances through a New York City crosswalk in traffic.
"Honey, we've shut down 8th Avenue before so that's nothing," Sherman-Palladino joked, referring to Maisel location production. "We love the city so much but we're just horrible people."
Palladino said the ballet street dance was less disruptive than some of their previous New York productions.
"It's the middle of the day in New York City, right at a busy, busy crossroads right in front of Lincoln Center," he said. "They let us do it because they could divert traffic that way and this way so we weren't blocking anything that completely blocked the arteries."
Many of the dancers on Étoile are professional ballet dancers. De Laáge had taken ballet until she was 18, but could not relearn all her training years later.
De Laáge performs some choreography in the dance studio, but when Cheyenne wears pointe shoes to perform, De Laáge let her double, Constance Devernay-Laurence, perform the closeups.
"I didn't want to put on shoes again because my feet weren't trained," de Laáge said. "You have to break the line of your feet to have beautiful feet with pointe shoes and that's a life of work."
