I don’t know how interesting the working relationship between two well-liked but not particularly famous actresses on a show that no one remembers is. However, I found it fascinating to learn that Parkey Posey is an emotional actress, while Lauren Ambrose is very much a cerebral one, according to Amy Sherman-Palladino, the showrunner of Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and The Return of Jezebel James, the latter of which starred Posey and Ambrose.

When asked about The Return of Jezebel James by Marc Maron on the same WTF podcast where she recalled working on the abusive set of Kirstie Alley’s Veronica’s Closet, Sherman-Palladino said that The Return of Jezebel James—a sitcom that starred Posey and Ambrose as sisters—was a victim of the 2008 writers’ strike. Officially, however, the first-season episode order was cut from 13 to 7 because of the writers’ strike, but the show itself was canceled after only 3 episodes aired due to “unacceptably low ratings.”

According to Sherman-Palladino, Posey and Ambrose were not a good match. She referred to them as “two unbelievably talented people,” but they worked so differently.

“They were not a match made [in heaven] because Parker is all here,” Sherman-Palladino said, likely pointing to her heart. “Parker sometimes would be rehearsing, and she would stop, and she wouldn’t tell you why she was stopping. And then she would just go back and start at some point without telling anybody, so nobody knew where they were supposed to be.”

“That was just her thing. She cried every day at four o’clock. Every day at four o’clock, I’d have to hold her. I’ve never held anyone so much in my life.”

“And Lauren,” Sherman-Palladino continued, “is very much like, ‘But why?’ But why is that funny?” In other words, Ambrose needed to know her character’s motivations. She needed to understand why her character acted the way she did or why those actions were funny.

“They were both so talented,” she concluded, “and if they could have found a way to zhuzh together, I think it could have been really great, but the writers’ strike happened and it was like, ‘We’re done.’”

Also, terrible ratings. The show was the 86th-ranked series the week it premiered on Fox.

Source: WTF with Marc Maron