Roy Price cancelled ‘Good Girls Revolt’; for the show’s stars, it’s ‘horribly meta’
AFTER a wave of sexual harassment accusations in Hollywood, chatter in the industry isn’t just about how sexism infects offices — it’s also about how it infects what you watch.
Roy Price’s resignation last week from Amazon Studios amid sexual harassment allegations has been especially resonant for cast members of “Good Girls Revolt,” the series about sexism in the workplace that Amazon didn’t renew after one season.
Amazon Studios has maintained that its decision was solely because of the show’s under-performance. But for many of those who worked on the show, its end was baffling and deeply personal. Since the allegations against Price have become public, several of the stars have been openly tweeting about the show, and privately texting each other about the new revelations in a group chat.
“The show getting cancelled in that way felt so horribly meta,” said Erin Darke, who played Cindy Reston, a magazine researcher with grand career plans, in a recent interview. “And such a horrific reminder of how far we haven’t come when one guy who seems didn’t even watch it just had the power himself to say no, no one gets to watch it.”
Based on Lynn Povich’s memoir about female journalists’ 1970 discrimination lawsuit against Newsweek magazine, “Good Girls Revolt” earned rave reviews, a 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score and plenty of media buzz. Amazon’s decision, which came just weeks after its October 2016 release, prompted the show’s creator to make the rare move of calling out Price specifically.
“What we hadn’t factored in is that Roy Price just doesn’t care for the show,” Dana Calvo told the Hollywood Reporter in December. The outlet, citing insiders, reported Price didn’t think the show was an awardsseason contender and questioned whether he watched the series. Calvo added: “All I know is that in the (season two) pitch, he asked us to refer to the characters by the actors’ names because he didn’t know the characters’ names.”
Genevieve Angelson, who played the hard-working researcher Patti Robinson, said she “doubled over and sobbed” on her bedroom floor when she found out Amazon wasn’t renewing the series. The excitement over show had been palpable to her; for weeks, she had been getting recognised and flooded with deeply personal fan messages.
“It was just so shocking. It was so the opposite of everything the evidence had told us,” Angelson said. “I’ve been the lead on other TV shows before, and that visceral response in my day-today life hadn’t happened before.”
Like competitors Netflix and Hulu, Amazon doesn’release its viewership data. An outside fi rm that compiled audience estimates for Sony said the show was a hit, especially with women. Amazon’s now-former head of comedy and drama development, Joe Lewis, said that those figures “are wrong and that the show wasn’t performing at the levels we had hoped for.”
Amazon and Sony, which produced the show, both declined to comment for this story. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)