‘GLOW’ grapples with ‘details’ of Vegas
IT’S taken two years, 15 Emmy nominations and no telling how many tanker trucks filled with hairspray, but the ladies of “GLOW” (Friday, Netflix) are finally headed to Las Vegas where they belong.
The comedy is loosely based on the syndicated “GLOW: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling” that called the Riviera home from 1986 to ’90. As Season 3 begins, the wrestlers have taken up residency as part of a nightly show in the fictional Fan-tan Hotel & Casino. According
to one character, it’s located “about $200 east” of the Strip.
“Vegas feels like a very tricky place for women in 1986, so that felt really interesting to us,” co-creator
Liz Flahive says of the period piece. “But we wanted to get it right, and we wanted the details of being a performer living and working in Vegas to feel real and to feel very authentic.”
‘An insane thing’
Flahive and co-creator Carly Mensch, self-described “research nerds,” led a group of around 20 members of the show’s writing staff on a three-day fact-finding mission to Las Vegas. Their itinerary included stops at Grant Philipo’s Las Vegas Showgirl Museum, “Vegas! The Show” and the old “Jubilee!” dressing rooms at Bally’s.
“It was, like, such fairy dust to be around those racks and racks of costumes,” Flahive says of their “Jubilee!” experience. “It’s an insane thing to see.”
That connection came in handy for a subplot involving Sandy Devereaux
St. Clair (Geena Davis), the Fan-tan’s entertainment director. The former showgirl oversees the hotel’s longrunning production show, “Rhapsody,” in the big room. To make those dancers look as authentic as possible, the series worked out a deal to use some of the actual “Jubilee!” costumes.
“We obviously had to insure them, we had to go pick them up, and they had to be stored at a certain temperature,” Flahive says. “And we were very, very, very, very careful with them, because they’re just … they’re astonishing.”
The creators reached out to numerous people who’ve worked the Strip, including show producer David Saxe and magician Murray Sawchuck. The former earned