‘Étoile’ creators answer burning season 1 questions

Everything was very much not beautiful at the ballet.

The first season of Étoile jeté’d on to Prime Video on Thursday, plunging viewers into the world of professional ballet in New York and Paris. And after a whirlwind of a season, we’re not ready for the curtain to drop without getting some answers.

Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge) found herself caught between her new home at the Metropolitan Ballet in New York and her roots in Paris. After accepting Jack Fish’s (Luke Kirby) job offer to be the company’s next artistic director, she watches her dreams fall apart as the company’s former AD, Nicholas Leutwylek (David Haig), makes a miraculous recovery from his stroke.

It doesn’t help that she simultaneously must confront her own mortality after slipping during a performance and that her dance partner and lover, Gael Rodriguez (David Alvarez), broke up with her. So naturally, she chooses to drown her sorrows by hooking up with Jack, even though they both admit to each other that it’s a bad idea (and *surprise* one they’ve tried before).

Meanwhile, Geneviève Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is furious with Jack for potentially stealing Cheyenne out from under her when they had only agreed to a one-year swap. She’s already in the hot seat with her job as the director of the Paris ballet after a strange opening night that sees American choreographer, Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick), leapt onto the stage to re-choreograph his ballet in the middle of the show.

Seemingly disastrous, the interruption instead goes viral, bringing new audiences to the ballet and potentially saving Geneviève’s job. Her dancers, at least, are happy as Mishi Duplessis (Taïs Vinolo) continues to define herself apart from her mother and welcomes her crush to see her dance.

Meanwhile, Tobias, in the midst of working with dancer Gabin Roux (Ivan du Pontavice), finally gives in to their combustible chemistry and kisses Gabin in front of the entire audience.

While we still don’t know if the show will get a second season, we had to call up co-creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino and put them through some metaphorical barre exercises to find out what might be in store.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What is it that makes Jack offer Cheyenne this job? The suggestion comes from quite the unwelcome place in donor Crispin Shamblee [Simon Callow].

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: Because it’s the right suggestion. And the great thing about Jack is he’s going to fight it tooth and nail, just like he fought the swap idea. But in the end, the longevity of the company is the most important thing. And it needed something original. It needed the pop of energy. And she’s the future.

DAN PALLADINO: And Geneviève in the first episode was the person that got him out of his lethargy and made him think you have to take some risks. So the decision he makes in episode 8 is not a decision he would’ve made [before]. When we first met him, he was much more conservative. But now Geneviève showed him how to take risks. So he realizes don’t go right down the middle, don’t go with one of the usual names off the list, go with someone who might fail spectacularly, but also might succeed spectacularly. It’s the irony of, Geneviève got him out of his mindset and now he’s doing something that actually crosses against Geneviève and is taking a risk on this sort of fiery woman. 

Crispin has been a thorn in Jack’s side all season and he’s a corrupt billionaire. So what are his actual intentions for the theater? Is he just in it for the glory? Does he genuinely care about ballet? 

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: Yeah, he makes it very clear. He’s one of those guys who, the world can go to hell and h has very few scruples when it comes to actual human beings, but he has a true love of ballet. 

After the bizarre success of Tobias’s interruption, does this mean Geneviève might get to keep her job a little longer? 

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: She might, but then she just lost her lead ballerina that was supposed to come back after a year. So that can’t be good.

DAN PALLADINO: Or did she?

Tobias and Gabin finally kiss. Does that mean they’re a couple going forward? It doesn’t seem like Tobias is maybe that capable of being in a relationship. 

DAN PALLADINO: We haven’t really talked about where we would go from here.

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: First of all, it depends if we get a second season.

DAN PALLADINO: There is that. But also it depends on whether we take up in the story from where we left off or do we jump ahead in time? We’ll do a cliffhanger at the end, but we don’t necessarily know exactly where it’s going. It’s part of what makes this all still interesting and fascinating for us. 

Why does Gael end things with Cheyenne? It feels a little unprompted. 

DAN PALLADINO: Oh, really? Because she’s very dismissive of him. I mean, she grabbed him when he was unaware of what was happening. She acted in a cliche way that TV and film dudes sometimes do. But she’s used to having her way and being the one to end it. And she met a man who was strong enough to understand that it was time for him to do that. 

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: There’s also unfinished business with his ex. 

How much is her heartbreak and her upset genuinely about him versus the storm of everything that’s happening around her and possibly losing the job? 

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: The whole thing about the ballet was that she didn’t understand why [people would do this]. When he unceremoniously dumped her like that, she suddenly understood why. It was the first time she was starting to have feelings for somebody. And that explained to her, “Oh, I know what this ballet is about.” And now the ballet is called I Married Myself, which is basically about being alone. 

Jack comes in to reassure her, and then they acknowledge that hooking up is a bad idea. But how bad? 

DAN PALLADINO: I would say probably really bad. But we don’t know. We’ve never told the audience exactly what happened the first time. And we would probably hear more about that. 

Jack had feelings for Geneviève earlier in the season. In addition to Geneviève being upset that he stole Cheyenne away artistically, is there possibility for a love triangle there? 

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: If we get a second season, there’s a possibility for just about anything.

DAN PALLADINO: It became a triangle in the very last moment of episode 8. In a cutthroat business, you sometimes do things, even if they work against someone that you care about. Jack picked up this risk taking from Geneviève, ironically, and then is taking risks that work against her.

The depth of feeling that Jack had for Nicholas was the strongest emotions we’d seen from him all season. Is Nicholas a father figure to him in some ways, would you say? 

DAN PALLADINO: Oh, totally. We show that Jack is super, super tight with his mom, who runs hot and cold on him. We don’t know much about his father, but Jack is classically a boy looking for a father figure. And Nicholas, we were showing all along, was definitely someone he really relied on and probably loved more than he knew. He learns that later. 

When you were breaking the season, did you consider having Nicholas die or was he always going to have this miraculous recovery? 

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: No, we didn’t want him to die. 

DAN PALLADINO: When we talked to David Haig, we made a promise that we wouldn’t kill him off. We told him, “There’s going to be a medical issue and it’s going to be serious. But don’t worry.”

We’ve seen how fragile his health is. So I assume that this recovery could be short-lived if you get a second season?

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: If we get a second season, we’ll see how short-lived it is.

DAN PALLADINO: Until we get the second season, he should eat a lot of fiber.

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO: Just some pushups.

DAN PALLADINO: Yeah. We want him healthy until we start the second season, at least. 

In terms of where we leave Cheyenne, is this ambition thwarted? Is she realizing a whole new world that she didn’t know was open to her? 

DAN PALLADINO: The very end is a real mess and we don’t really point to which way it’s going. We started her journey with — she was a woman who was wondering if she had anything left in her. She was 32, 33, which is when ballerinas start thinking about longevity, unfortunately, because it’s such a fragile art form. She’s in a horrible emotional state at the end. She read into her slip the coming of the end of her career. And she cares for Geneviève too. She’s also acting rashly. So there’s a lot of tidying up emotionally to do.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

All episodes of Étoile season 1 are streaming now on Prime Video.