10 Quick Questions for Tony Shalhoub

After decades in the entertainment industry — onstage and on screens large and small — the award-winning Tony Shalhoub has never really stopped having a moment. Now in the fourth season of Amazon’s period comedy, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Shalhoub’s Abe Weissman is getting a spotlight of his own.

Let’s talk about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Describe Abe in a sentence or two.

This season I would describe him as going through a major midlife shift and coming out on the other side smelling like a rose, no pun intended. [Abe’s wife’s name is Rose.] With his position at The Village Voice, he has more freedom, his instincts and his creativity are valued and encouraged and fostered.

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Have you learned anything about reporters over the years that Abe can put to good use in his new job at the newspaper?

I’m the theater critic, so I kind of get my revenge on all the times I got bad reviews in my life — and there were many.

Shalhoub plays Abe Weissman, the father of housewife-turned comic Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) in 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.'

Sarah Shatz/Amazon/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Bad reviews notwithstanding, you have four Emmys, a Tony and many more nominations. Where do you keep those statues?

They’re all in my closet right now. They’re usually a little more prominently placed, but we had a wedding in our apartment. Because of COVID, we volunteered our place to my niece Rachel. It was obviously a small gathering, but I thought it might be kind of tacky and didn’t want to steal her thunder. So we just kind of moved the statues away from the center of the mantel and into a closet, and we never restored it. So we’re ready for more weddings, if you know anyone.

Speaking of COVID, how would your popular character from TV’s Monk, with his severe OCD, have handled the pandemic?

We actually did a PSA [public service announcement] about a year and a half ago when COVID was first ramping up — the writers put together a piece which we shot in my apartment. My wife [actress Brooke Adams] shot it and directed it. We had the cast members on Zoom, and Monk was, as you can imagine, in very rough shape.

And you and your wife both had COVID. How did you fare?

It was a challenging couple of weeks. It was before everybody kind of knew what the long-term effects were or how long the symptoms would last or even what the symptoms would end up being. There wasn’t much doctors could do for us other than just say, “Get rest. Drink a lot of fluids. Steer clear of other people.” We came through without having to be hospitalized.

Who’s your favorite person to do a scene with on Maisel?

This past season, I did get to work with Jason Alexander again. He comes back — he and Abe go way back to their college days so they have a really interesting, complicated relationship, which we learn a lot more about in Season 4. It’s never a dull moment.