“That’s what people are talking about, is the plunger. The plunger has surpassed us all,” Alex Borstein, one of the stars of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” said Tuesday in the wake of her latest Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. This is her second time being nominated in the category for playing Susie Myerson — last year, she won.
“You could start an Instagram account for the plunger just to see how many followers it gets. It’s ridiculous, and yet people are absolutely obsessed with that plunger,” she told TheWrap of the inanimate object Susie carries around with her throughout the Catskills portion of Season 2, giving her credibility as she pretends to be a janitor at Steiner Resort.
As if the fact that Amazon has set up giant plungers in malls across Los Angeles and New York isn’t enough to prove the widespread fascination with Susie’s signature prop, Borstein said she’s actually been asked to sign plungers in real life. More than once.
“I’ve done some live shows with a couple of guys, a musical-comedy show, and people show up with plungers for me to sign. It’s crazy. It’s so weird,” she said.
But don’t worry — she doesn’t sign used ones.
“Well, first I ask if it’s brand new. I won’t touch it if it’s from their house,” she laughed.
Fans will recall that Season 2 left off on an unresolved note for Susie. At the end of the season, her client Midge’s arch-nemesis, rival comedienne Sophie Lennon, asks Susie to be her manager — while across town, Midge joyfully accepts famous singer Shy Baldwin’s offer for her to accompany him on tour as his opening act.
We won’t see Susie’s reaction to the latter piece of information until Season 3, but Borstein dropped a few hints about new developments for the character she calls a “brash yet vulnerable broad.”
“You get to see Susie dive in. You get to see her try to be a duck, you know? Ducks look like they’re calmly floating on the water, but underneath they’re frantic, they’re legs are paddling like crazy, which you can’t see,” she said. “Water rolls off their feathers and she kind of gives that off, frantically paddling below. Cause she doesn’t really know what she’s doing, she’s making it up as she goes along. I think you kind of see her keeping her head above water.”