<em>Marvelous Mrs. Maisel</em>'s Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein channel iconic duos for EW's cover shoot

After five seasons of stand-up sets, fabulous hot pink wardrobe ensembles, and more laughs than we can count, it's time to say goodbye to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. To celebrate Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) and Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein) earning their place in the panoply of funny female television duos, EW's latest cover story has the actresses stepping back in time and bringing to life some of TV's most marvelous pairs — I Love Lucy's Lucy and Ethel; The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Mary and Rhoda; Scooby-Doo's Daphne and Velma; and Laverne & Shirley's, well, Laverne and Shirley. "What I love about this shoot is that Midge and Susie are a little bit of all of them," says Brosnahan.

From the beginning, the Maisel creative team saw Midge and Susie as a duo with the iconic potential of those who'd come before. "We definitely saw a piece of the show as a buddy comedy between the two of them," says writer and executive producer Dan Palladino. "Maybe a little bit Lucy and Ethel. [Midge and Susie] always skirted around the word friends. They were in a business relationship. We deal with that in season 5 in a number of ways. But the unique thing about this is that they were in a very serious, focused business relationship. Begrudgingly, even if they didn't call it a friendship, they became a friendship. Because there was great respect between the two women too. Every episode they passed the Bechdel test. It's really about — you are uniquely suited to help me reach my goals and vice versa."

You know those YouTube videos of unlikely animal best friends? That's how Borstein sees her relationship with Brosnahan. "We're such different creatures," she says. "We're different in our daily lives, the way we work is very different, the way we approach material, the way we are on set — and somehow it really works. It's like a cat and a dog. She's very much a dog. My personality is very much like a cat. She's sweet and unstoppable and full of energy, and I'm a little bit more like, 'I will allow you to touch me when I feel like it,' and I mostly curl up and want to sleep."

The fact that Susie and Midge are impossible to imagine without each other is yet another reason to include them amidst the most memorable TV pairs. "I think about all of the duos [we're recreating], and you can't imagine one without the other," Borstein poses. "The mischief, the goings on, and the storylines require the other character. You look at Lucy and Ethel — of course, the show is about Lucy and Desi — but Lucy, every adventure she took was spent getting into trouble with Ethel. And Mary had to have Rhoda as that sounding board, and Laverne had her Shirley. It's impossible for me to imagine the characters moving forward and continuing to be able to have storylines without the other. That's what defines a forever duo."

Part of what makes Midge and Susie so special is the female-led team behind them, starting with series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a matriarchy top to bottom," says Brosnahan. "One of the best parts about working on it has been being able to watch so many extraordinary women at the top of their game, who are masters of their craft, do their thing and do it together. We are seeing a move toward embracing women at the center of shows — dynamic, flawed, three-dimensional women. I hope our show has been a small part of that."

The show might be called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but creator Amy Sherman-Palladino invariably saw it as a two-hander. "We always felt like the female friendship was as important and on an equal level with the journey of a 1950s housewife finding her way to stand-up comedy," she says. "One woman who came from great comfort and support in her former life. And one woman who came from nothing and could barely be civil to other people. Through the weird combination of their personalities, they managed to forge a bond and break through."

While Susie has steadily been in Midge's corner, often Midge hasn't returned the favor. Season 5 will see their dynamic become more symbiotic. "Susie has been Midge's advocate for such a long time," says Brosnahan. "Midge has f---ed it up in a number of different ways, or they've taken five steps forward and 12 steps back. A lot of that has been on Midge being impulsive. She's finally beginning to realize — and maybe it is maturity — that Susie has a lot on the line too. It's not all about Midge and she needs to be a better other half of this partnership."

Season 5 will present the cost of getting what you want. Midge and Susie have been chasing success — and, by extension, fame — for several years now. But it's lonely at the top. "Another thing we wanted to show was that you make your decision to lead that lonelier life," says Sherman-Palladino. "And you have to be strong enough to endure it." At least, Midge and Susie have each other.

After five seasons together, do the ladies wish they had a redo on anything? "Any actor would say on a series that we don't know where our characters are going to go," reflects Borstein. "Only the showrunner does. Had I had some of the knowledge of where I'd end up, I would've played some of their scenes differently. But maybe the performance would've been s--- if I knew too much. Because it's like life — you don't know where you're going to end up." Adds Brosnahan: "I have no regrets about anything apart from my swamp ass in Miami."

For Kevin Pollak — who portrays Midge's father-in-law, Moishe — the Midge and Susie relationship mirrors his own earliest partnership with his agent. "In the first phase of my own career, I had a very young agent, and the two of us sort of grew up together," he says. "There's something about starting out together that, as we see is the case with Susie and Midge, that lasts a lifetime."

"Alex and Rachel share this irreverent, fearless, take-no-prisoners approach to acting," says Tony Shalhoub, who stars as Midge's father, Abe. "They seem different, but they're aligned in spirit. They have this mutual respect that runs really deep. Midge and Susie are the next generation of the female buddy coworkers that we've seen. And they're both role models for young women."

The best duos thrive on the yin and yang of their wildly diverging personalities. Midge and Susie certainly fall in that category. "Susie gets very caught up in the day to day in the minutia, and Midge sees a bigger picture," says Borstein. "In that regard, they can't really do it without each other. Midge says, 'Let's change the business.' That's all Midge. I don't think Susie set out to change the business. She wanted to see how she could work her way within it. And Midge was the one who saw bigger and didn't want to just fill her dinner plate. She wanted to plan the meal."

Though Borstein and Brosnahan say their own journeys as professional partners and friends have mirrored Susie and Midge's story, they also confess they're very different people from their characters. "Susie truly is much more comfortable being alone," says Borstein. "Susie thrives with other people, but she doesn't really need anyone. That's a big difference — I'm a big baby, and being alone for too long, I get a lot more scared. Susie doesn't need any constant validation. I do. That's why we become actors. We're needy little creatures and I don't think Susie's that needy. It's fine for Midge to take all of that and have the constant validation. Susie just needs to know herself, what she's done and what she's capable of."

Even if Brosnahan and Borstein haven't always known where Midge and Susie were headed, the writing team has. "The ending of the series was really what we talked about even before we went into production on the pilot," says Dan Palladino. "Because we knew Midge's journey to a breakthrough [as a comic] was the most crucial, interesting and entertaining aspect of it. Then it's just a matter of, well, you can't do that for 10 years because you will get impatient. Two years is too quick. It was finding that happy medium to tell the story."

"Midge and I grew up together," says Brosnahan. "We had parallel journeys in some ways and also wildly different journeys in others. But I'm proud of the attempt. Just when I felt like I'd begin to grasp her, they hit me with something new and terrifying. And that's one of the greatest gifts you can ask for as an actor."

Ultimately, Borstein believes the magic of Midge and Susie is about the feel-good vibes the relationship brought audiences. "Whether it's a story about a sports team or stand-up, it's wanting to see the little guy persevere, the little gal become the big gal," she posits. "It makes people feel good. They perfectly encapsulate this female friendship and this female bond and what women want to strive for together and for each other. The bottom line is, we've had a lot of years lately that a lot of people have not felt very good, and this show is a spot that — through their successes, through their pushing and pushing and not giving up — has made a lot of people feel good."

"When Midge has to battle through being a woman in the world of show business, we see that she is a fighter," says Shalhoub (center with, from left, Will Brill, Marin Hinkle, Rachel Brosnahan, and Justine Lupe). "Both Abe and Rose, as we discover, are fighters too. They're survivors. They know how to adapt."

"Season 5 tests this relationship tremendously," teases Borstein. "They stumble. Marriage ain't easy, and this one is certainly not immune to a lot of the trouble. Whether that means they're going to be working together forever, I don't know. But they have to be a part of each other's lives forever in some regard."

"Nothing's ever linear on the path to success, and that'll be true here too," says Brosnahan (with new season regular Reid Scott, who joined as talk show host Gordon Ford in season 4). Susie and Midge are "both going to be pushed and stretched in ways that they can't imagine," she continues. "Sometimes they do their best work out the other side of a big blowup between the two of them. We can certainly expect the roller coaster to continue. But ultimately, it's the two of them at the end of the day."

"I hope the show was entertaining as f---, and that it made people laugh when the world was on fire," says Brosnahan. "But I've heard incredible stories, from young women in particular, who felt inspired by the show to change their lives — to try something that they'd never tried before, to be a little bit braver. One can only hope that people keep finding it and feel a little bit of that same thing."

"This show changed my life," adds Brosnahan. "Midge and I grew up together. I learned how to be a better leader, all while learning and trying to be a better person outside of the show. Everything about Midge and about this project felt impossible, as someone who toes the line of debilitating insecurity about my own ability. Finding the unflappable confidence that Midge has was a daunting task that never got easier. But the process of trying to discover that taught me a lot about what's possible."