A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s Emmy magazine.
When “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series last year, it landed three acting nominations, and 14 noms overall. But this year, the series scored 20 nominations, leading all comedy series, and more than doubling its acting nominations to seven — among them was Tony Shalhoub, who plays “Midge” Maisel’s delightfully idiosyncratic father, Abe Weissman.
When Shalhoub called to mind his most challenging scene of Season 2 to film, he naturally went to one of his most character-defining moment on screen so far — that night when his professor character goes to the Concord hotel in the Catskills and learns for the first time that his daughter, played by Rachel Brosnahan, has been moonlighting as a standup comedian.