Production on Étoile wrapped filming what feels like a lifetime ago. Vice President Kamala Harris had just become the Democratic nominee for president; “brat summer” was in full swing; and the show’s creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, of Gilmore Girls and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fame, could not have predicted how resonant their new ballet-set drama-comedy would become. Over half a year later, all eight episodes are now streaming on Prime Video, and the show’s message on the importance of saving ballet could not be more timely, particularly as the Trump administration continues to threaten funding to the arts.

“I don’t know how the art will survive these four years,” actor Yanic Truesdale says. “I don’t know how I will survive.” In Étoile, Truesdale plays Raphael, second-in-command of the fictional Parisian ballet company Le Ballet National; the show follows Le Ballet National (a version of the famed Ballet de l’Opéra) and the Metropolitan Ballet (which stands in for the New York City Ballet) as they swap their top talent in an effort to revitalize both struggling companies.

But Étoile is less about the drama of a French ballerina headed to the Big Apple and a New York choreographer relocating to Paris, and more about the vital importance of the performing arts in today’s climate. “It’s about keeping this art form alive, and it’s about people who are deeply, deeply passionate about what they do,” star Gideon Glick tells T&C. “The stakes are so high.”

As a Canadian who lives in Los Angeles, Truesdale says he wants to “scream” the message of the series from the rooftops. “I have chosen the arts as a way of living and as a way of seeing life,” he says. “I don’t think that we can live without art. It’s not just a thing for the rich; it’s an add-on to life. The mere fact of being alive is a challenge as human beings, and I think art puts some softer coating on the life of an experience of being a human.”

Full performances feature throughout Étoile, including of Mishi (Taïs Vinolo).

In the first few months of Donald Trump’s second term, the 47th president and his administration have focused on dismantling arts institutions: He named himself chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; issued an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution; laid off up to 80% of staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities; and canceled federal funding to arts and culture organizations around the country. While Étoile was conceived and went into production long before Trump took office in January, the eight episodes feel like a direct response to his threat to the art community.

It’s not the Palladinos’ first rodeo making a series that centers the art world—or more specifically, the world of ballet. Thirteen years ago, they created Bunheads, a comedy-slash-drama starring Sutton Foster as a former Vegas showgirl who starts teaching ballet alongside her new mother-in-law, and was canceled after just one season. Bunheads has found a cult following in the years since, and after a detour into mid-century stand-up comedy in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Sherman-Palladino and Palladino are finding new ground with ballet in Étoile. “The arts are more under siege now than they were when we did Bunheads,” Sherman-Palladino says. “It’s a little alarming to see what’s happening in the arts world, in dance, in theater—they’re being decimated.”

For Luke Kirby, who plays Jack, the director of the Metropolitan Ballet, Étoile is participating in a “vital conversation” about the future of arts in this country. “Most of my life has been about being in a room with strangers and having a story be told or watching a creation made manifest,” he says, “and it’s only helped improve my sense of what it is to be here. [Étoile] feels important and special.” He adds, “performing arts are near impossible to make happen at all. So to see anything executed is always a wonder to behold. I hope that we honored that—the difficulty of making something happen and the reward that comes from it.”

Kirby’s Jack and ballerina Cheyenne, played by Lou de Laâge.

Much of the mission of Étoile is also about making ballet (and arts more broadly) accessible to the general public. Truesdale hopes audiences “connect with the fact that art is really important on our society,” and that ballet and dance find bigger audiences because of the series. “Some people that have never seen ballet or never been to a ballet or never been to a dance show will walk away watching the show thinking, ‘Oh, this is really cool,’ and will seek seeing a live performance. It starts with one experience and if you’re touched by it, if you’re moved by it, if you feel something and you go home, then we’ve just cracked a a new door.”

One particularly prescient storyline, given Trump’s decimation of arts funding, is Jack’s focus on the Metropolitan Ballet’s budget—and much of the show’s plot driven by how these two ballet companies will continue to exist financially. “I would love to be able to say: ‘We made this up! The arts are fabulous! Dancers are making 200 million a year, they don’t know what to do with their money, it just falls out of their tutus!’ I would love to be able to say that that’s the reality,” Sherman-Palladino says. As New Yorkers, she and her husband see their friends and colleagues in the theater, dance, and music worlds struggle to make ends meet. “It’s heartbreaking,” she adds. “It’s heartbreaking on a larger scale, because I know people are freaked out about everything that’s going on.”

“But this,” she continues, referring to performing arts, “is basic stuff that has been part of humanity—since the beginning of humanity. The need to create, the need to think beyond your little world, the need to learn what someone else’s story is—that’s what the arts do. As we erode that, it doesn’t matter how many supercomputers you have in your pocket, you’re eroding human contact with each other and human understanding. I don’t think that humans survive without the arts.”

She jokes: “So watch Étoile, or we’re all dead! That’s my message.”

All eight episodes of Étoile are now streaming on Prime Video. Watch now