It was hard to ignore how ironic the weather was when I sat down with Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino to discuss the third season of their candy-colored Amazon hit, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Then again, perhaps it was fitting that on the day we got together to chat about a season that brings our central comedian to sunny Miami, our surroundings were frigid, snowy, and upsettingly damp. After all, a big chunk of Maisel’s appeal is the escapism of it all—the journey to a world much prettier, charming, and given to whimsy than our own.

Last year, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s second season took us to such far-flung locations as Paris and the Catskills. This year, as Midge Maisel goes on her first tour—with famed (fictional) musician Shy Baldwin—Joel takes the audience to a new location of his own: Chinatown. Sherman-Palladino comes by her interest in these travel adventures honestly; her father was a stand-up comedian, and would return from his tours with stories to share—although, she admits, “With my family, I never know how much is true and how much is made up.” When it comes to Maisel, “it should feel like Narnia or Oz,” Sherman-Palladino said. “Like everything she's seeing is something that she hasn't experienced before.” And so we spoke at length about the ways the Palladinos crafted the most recent chapter in their heroine’s adventure. The following conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: So obviously, one of the additions a lot of people are most excited about this season is Sterling K. Brown.

Amy Sherman-Palladino: I know. We didn't have him enough, unfortunately, ’cause Sterling K. Brown, he's very busy. Literally, like, it got to the point where I became like his old Jewish grandmother and I'm going, “When are you going to sleep?” It was like he was flying to us and he was shooting into the night and then getting on a plane and going to Orlando, and then going to these things, and it has to be back on the set for this. I'm literally like, “Baby, when do you sleep?” He's like, “Ah, don't worry about it.”

Did you have him in mind to play Shy Baldwin’s manager, Reggie, from the beginning?

Sherman-Palladino: We had the story line and a character that served the story line in the way that we needed it. But once we homed in on Sterling and we realized we could get him, things shifted. The story line stayed the same, but as far as what the character was and who it was, that shifted a little bit because we didn't have him much. We had to make sure that when we hit with him, we hit for very specific and important reasons. We couldn't waste it.

You also brought Liza Weil in for this season. What was it like for both of you to have worked with her across the years in Gilmore Girls, Bunheads, and now Maisel?

Dan Palladino: The thing about Liza is that she came to the Gilmore set fully cooked. Like she was an expert comedian. She didn't know she was an expert comedian.

Sherman-Palladino: Liza auditioned for Rory. She was so good, though, that we said, “Okay, well, we got to have that girl.” And so we wrote Paris for Liza.

Palladino: We had her on Bunheads, and she was sort of just about having her children there, and now she's matured into this beautiful woman.... So it's fun. I mean, we'll keep doing it as long as we're alive; she's going to outlive us.

Sherman-Palladino: She's a genius. She's a comedic genius.

What inspired you to bring the show to Chinatown? And what kind of research did that entail?

Sherman-Palladino: It was sort of us kind of looking around and feeling like, Where can we stretch out a little bit now? We love this time period because it's a time period of change. You know, the late '50s, early '60s, a lot was changing. You're going to be heading into the '60s civil rights, it's like attitudes were shifting. It felt like a good time to drop this woman who is kind of straddling the past but pushing to the future into this exact time period.

You know the world back then, also in the research that we did, they were like their own island, you know? They policed themselves, and a lot of it was because nobody knew the language. So they existed as if they were almost like they came from China, they came here, and the revolution just happened and shut down China, and then they're sort of here recreating this whole world. And it just felt sort of interesting and colorful and mysterious.

And I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about Lenny Bruce. He and Midge have had a sort of quiet will-they-won’t they throughout the series, but this season it feels more explicit.

Sherman-Palladino: I think a lot of times when we see a man and a woman, [we ask] “will they, won't they” right from the get-go. And especially since Luke Kirby is, I mean, I think if Lenny Bruce came back from the dead and he saw who we had portraying him, he'd be like, Jesus Christ.

I mean, he's a veritable dreamboat. Yes.

Sherman-Palladino: When you put those two together visually you're like, “Well, you gotta fuck.” Cause you're going to fucking have babies and those babies will be beautiful. But what we love about the Lenny-Midge relationship, Rachel [Brosnahan] and I talked about it endlessly, is that he appreciated her for her talent—for her guts. For her ballsiness. He saw something in her—that she was going to try to strike out in a way that he’s trying to strike out. He has more issues—which, obviously, we know about the real Lenny Bruce—than she does. But you know, there’s always an attraction between them that’s just natural. We didn’t even write it.

When we cast Luke, it was just for the pilot. We had absolutely no real intention of bringing him back and continuing him. But when we looked at Luke. In addition to doing the real essence of what Lenny is, he's just a great actor and just a darling guy. Every time you get them together, they just had a camaraderie and a chemistry—and it was the fact that he wasn't looking at her like, “I just want to get in your pants.” The fact that she was there for him last year when he was feeling low and in the season finale, and she shows up for him...I think that, that a lot of time it translates into, “Well, eventually they're going to have sex.” Right? But it's not necessarily the way it's going to go.

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