'It's Just for the Pure Love of This Art Form': ‘THR Frontrunners' Panel With ‘Étoile' Showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino

Amy-Sherman Palladino and Daniel Palladino have dabbled in the world of ballet before — their 2012 series Bunheads focused on a ballet school and their Gilmore Girls character of Miss Patty (Liz Torres) was a dance teacher. But with Étoile, the showrunner couple wanted to explore the art form even deeper.
'I was a dancer, so I grew up in that world,' Sherman-Palladino said at a recent THR Frontrunners panel. 'Most of the stuff that I've seen done around the ballet world, it's usually like, 'Oh, they're so pretty and fluffy onstage,' but then offstage they push each other off buildings and murder each other. I'm kidding. But there's just so much more to it than that. They are actually a really interesting group of people, and it's the one art form where you're guaranteed to never make a dime. You're going to die poor and then your career will be over at 25 and you'll be teaching Pilates and you're giving up everything because it's just for the pure love of this art form, and I find that miraculous.'
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Étoile follows two ballet companies in New York and Paris that swap their most talented stars in an attempt to boost ticket sales. Luke Kirby and Charlotte Gainsbourg lead the main cast, with Lou de Laâge, Gideon Glick, Ivan du Pontavice, Yanic Truesdale and David Alvarez rounding out the ensemble.
The Palladinos, known for their rapid-fire dialogue across beloved series like Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, saw an added challenge to the writing of the script when they decided to incorporate the French language.
'We went through many translators,' Palladino admits. 'We used Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou de Laâge mainly as our judges because they were familiar with what we had done with Maisel and Gilmore Girls, and they knew about the snap [referring to the cadence of the Palladino dialogue] and they really wanted to do that, and they really wanted to do it in English. But neither of them had really done comedy in English before. But we kept getting head-shaking when we asked, 'what about these translations?' and they were like 'NO!' The worst thing they said was, 'well, it is the words.' … We finally found this really great lady, who really knows both languages, and she was on set with us.'
Once the scripts were ready, the Palladinos knew casting would be an extra challenge due to the fact that they had to hire dancers who could act and vice versa as well as professional dancers for the performance sequences and body doubles for certain actors.
'The casting took forever,' says Palladino. 'For the dance companies, we basically had to put 20 professional grade dancers in each country, and that took a long time. … We tried to give all of them something to say at some point because they wanted to and we wanted to do that for them.'
'And this show is about the dancers — it's not a dance show — it's really about them and their lives and their work,' adds Sherman-Palladino. 'And so when we went to them first to say, 'we come in peace,' we wanted them to understand that they weren't window dressing to us, they were real characters. We got to know them and their voices so that when we gave them dialogue, it was something that was akin to who they were.'
For de Laâge's character Cheyenne, the premier ballerina in the world, the duo knew that they wouldn't be able to 'find a dancer who could take on a role as complex as Cheyenne,' says Palladino. 'Here, the acting came first, so we did cast Lou, who was not a dancer, but as Amy said, because dancers give off being a dancer by walking, sitting in a certain way, we went through very, very vigorous training, but we also had a dance double come in. … I know a lot of people didn't know that [Lou] was not a dancer.'
Of course, Taïs Vinolo, who plays Mishi, is a dancer in real life, as is Alvarez, who plays Gael.
'David was Bernardo in West Side Story, and we saw him when he was 14 in Billy Elliot,' says Palladino, to which Sherman-Palladino adds, 'Gael was not in the show. We were looking for at least two or three ringers that we could have as actors who also did their own dancing. He's an interesting guy: He was on Broadway; he won a Tony; then he danced at ABT [American Ballet Theatre] for a while; then he joined the army; then he backpacked across Mexico for two years. … And so we thought, well, that's kind of a fun character and we asked him, 'Do you mind if we steal your entire life for our evil purposes?' And I don't know if he knew we were serious until he saw the script [and who Gael is in the series].'
The show, almost three years in the making, received a two-season order from Amazon in 2023 — and while the season one finale ended with some twists and turns, Sherman-Palladino says there's been no progress on a second season so far.
'Let's talk about Hollywood a little bit,' Sherman-Palladino says. 'When they say two-year pickup, they don't mean it. They mean one year and then we'll see who's still working at Amazon by the time the second year comes around to be greenlit. So as of yet, there is no second season pickup. So what I'm saying is if you want Étoile, please go home and buy a lot of toilet paper on Amazon. I know Amazon loves selling toilet paper. So if you watch Étoile and go buy 40,000 things of toilet paper, they'll be like, 'wow, look at all the toilet paper that we sell when people watch Étoile.' And then maybe we'll get a second season.'
This edition of THR Frontrunners is sponsored by Prime Video.
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