Ballet is often seen as beautiful, ethereal, even mysterious—but can it be cool? That’s the gamble behind Étoile, a new Amazon Prime Video series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, known for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Set between Paris and New York, the series follows two ballet companies uniting to attract audiences and survive. But its true heartbeat is the dancing itself—real lifts, turns, and leaps performed by real dancers, many of whom appear in the cast.
David Alvarez, a Tony Award-winning actor-dancer who plays Gael, stresses that ballet is impossible to fake. “Any dancer will spot you from a mile away,” he says. Alvarez brings credibility, having performed as Billy Elliot on Broadway and Bernardo in West Side Story. He shares the screen with Lou de Laâge, who plays Cheyenne, a volatile étoile entangled with Gael, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who runs the Paris ballet troupe opposite Luke Kirby’s New York director.
Real-life dancers like Taïs Vinolo, who plays Mishi, bring authenticity. Vinolo admits acting was a new challenge, but she’s confident the show reveals ballet’s true rigor. “It’s very physical, very hard, and very disciplined—mentally too,” she says. Sherman-Palladino, who trained seriously in ballet as a child, was drawn to its raw intensity. “It’s an art form where you’re guaranteed not to make money,” she says. “So you have to really love it.”
The production was multilingual and occasionally chaotic, with dialogue switching between English and French. The Palladinos’ fast-paced scripts proved difficult to translate until they found the right translator. Gainsbourg, although fluent in English, struggled to match the rhythm of the lines. De Laâge had nine months to improve her English during the writers’ strike, which helped her embrace the role more fully.
For the dancers in the cast, like Vinolo and Alvarez, every detail matters—down to sewing pointe shoe ribbons by hand. “I have a specific way,” says Vinolo. Alvarez laughs and nods. In this world, passion is stitched into every thread.
READ MORE: