Luke Kirby Is Saying Goodbye To ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,’ But Not To Lenny Bruce

When Luke Kirby first auditioned for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ahead of its 2017 premiere, he thought he would just be appearing in the pilot. Instead, the 44-year-old actor’s compelling portrayal of late comedian Lenny Bruce earned him a 16-episode stint, a character arc that spanned all five seasons, a fan-favorite romantic relationship with the show’s leading lady Midge (Rachel Brosnhan), and an Emmy award for Outstanding Guest Actor In A Comedy Series.

Ahead of Maisel’s series finale, which premiered on Prime Video May 26, Kirby reflected on his incredible experience with Decider, sharing that even though he’s saying goodbye to the show, he plans to keep a little bit of Lenny Bruce with him forever.

“Goodbyes are rarely easy, but I think necessary,” Kirby told Decider over Zoom. “I haven’t said goodbye to him entirely, and don’t know that I ever will until the bitter end. It’s sad. It’s sad and hard to leave something special. But that all serves as a reminder of how lucky it is in the first place to even participate in anything.”

After Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino’s comedy-drama premiered the critically-acclaimed, albeit controversial comedian’s real-life daughter, Kitty Bruce — who received special thanks in the finale’s end credits — expressed her full support for the show, visiting set and even calling Kirby’s portrayal of her father “brilliant” and “amazing.” “That meant the world,” Kirby said. “I mean, it really freed me in moving forward in the next seasons that came after meeting Kitty. I just felt like I was in an OK place to keep exploring him. She was the person that I was most concerned — from the onset — of upsetting, so having that felt like a real lucky charm.”

Though Maisel’s Lenny Bruce was directly inspired by the real-life stand-up comic, his material, and performances, Sherman-Palladino crucially altered reality by making him a fierce champion of (the fictional) Midge Maisel’s comedy career. Since the first four seasons took characters and viewers alike from the late 1950s to 1960, fans have long wondered if the show would stay true to history and address Bruce’s 1966 death (the result of a drug overdose). In heavily relying on time jumps to craft a more complete story, the farewell season successfully says goodbye to the legendary comedian in its own thoughtful way.

After years of mutual respect, flirting, and one especially swoon-worthy date night in Season 3, Midge and Lenny finally consummated their sizzling slow-burn in a memorable Season 4 finale scene, only to end the episode with a fight. High off his sold-out Carnegie Hall show, Lenny warned Midge that if she blew her shot at stardom she would “break his fucking heart.” So Season 5’s poignant sendoff begins with a Midge and Lenny airport run-in, during which she assures him she won’t blow it, and he tells her he’s going to hold her to that.

At the start of Season 5, we learned the west coast-bound comedian was dealing with a slew of legal issues that dramatically worsened by the time we saw him again at the top of the series finale. In 1965, a year before the real Bruce’s death, we see the skilled comedian bombing in what would become his penultimate performance in San Francisco. After flipping through court documents, jumbling his words, and forgetting his own bits, he starts doing a folk dance on stage as Susie looks on with concern from the back of the club. “What I saw outside tonight was a fucking disgrace. You can do more than that,” she tells him after the show. “You are Lenny Bruce. There’s only ever gonna be one of you. Let’s get him back.” Kirby’s character denies help, and though we see him again later in the episode, the distressing scene was chronologically his last in the vast Maisel timeline.

“That was a taxing scene to do with him,” Alex Borstein, who plays Midge’s manager Susie Meyerson, told Decider about her finale scene with Kirby. “You know, he’s so good. And he brings such a richness, and a sadness, and a helplessness, and you want to just shake him and fix him and help him and it’s not possible.”

“It’s based off a real set that he did that I’ve watched over the years many times,” Kirby said when asked about his preparation for the serious scene. “It was just as fun as anything else to do, because I just have delighted in playing this guy. It definitely did not have the same kind of — I didn’t feel as puffed up as I usually do performing Lenny’s bits on the show, because the audience was a lot less giving. But, yeah. As always, [I] just felt very lucky.”

Maisel easily could have wrapped the comedian’s story on a somber note, but after Midge gets her big break on The Gordon Ford Show towards the end of the episode, we jump back in time six months and see her and Lenny in their Season 4 finale clothes making good on his promise to take for “some truly terrible Chinese food” after they did “some very blue things in that very blue room.” In the beautiful continuation of one of the series’ best episodes, Lenny and Midge’s palpable chemistry is on full display as they discuss their highly-anticipated night together and his confidence in her career potential. Reuniting with Brosnahan for one last scene was “just the way it’s always been with her,” according to Kirby. “Just kind of seamlessly transitioning into this kind of dream realm for a little while and just having a great ball with it. Just great. Even talking about it makes me realize that, yeah, that’s over. What a drag. It was really, really fun. I have to be careful in moments like that, to not think too much about what’s ahead of me. So I really did just kind of come out that day as any other day on the job, because what else can you do? You just have to know that you’re there to do a job. And so that’s what I did. Afterwards, it felt significant.”

When asked if he knew the final season would feature a callback to the Season 4 scene that took Midge and Lenny’s relationship to the next level, Kirby says it was as much a surprise to him as it was to viewers. “I didn’t know — I mean, we knew that it was special. We knew that it was a big decision for the writers to make and that we were definitely asserting a position that up until then we had been promised would never happen. So, that felt juicy and fun,” he said. “I didn’t know that they were going to call it back. When that did happen, I was really pleased, because it was clearly a very special evening slash morning for those two characters. Happy to revisit it for sure.”

At one point during the scene, Lenny steals Midge’s fortune cookie, cracks it open, and reads aloud a bespoke fortune he makes up for her on the spot. Earlier in the episode, we saw Midge tuck that same fortune into her dress ahead of her Gordon Ford Show performance, which means that six months after her night with Lenny she still had him with her. “That felt very special,” Kirby said reflecting on the sweet callback. “It harkens back to something that Lenny Bruce did in his own life, historically, with Joan Rivers. It was a very subtle and special touch. I’m glad that it was put in there and speaks volumes to their relationship with one small act.”

Kirby may have taken his final bow in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but like Midge, he’ll always keep a part of the comedian close to his heart. “You know, Lenny Bruce said there are never enough ‘I love yous.’ And that has stayed with me through every season,” Kirby shared. “I think I’ll carry it with me, right to that last gasp. So that’s the [takeaway] for me.”

All five seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are now streaming on Prime Video.