They didn’t have to wrestle with decision to take roles
Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin, the stars of “GLOW,” Netflix’s wrestling comedy, are enjoying the afterglow.
It’s mid-December and the duo, wearing metallic leotards and balancing some heavily teased hair atop their heads, are taking a breather from shooting an episode of the series at the Hollywood Palladium. There’s been body slamming and elbows to the face.
“We have such a respect for wrestling now,” Brie says. “I will defend it to the death.”
In “GLOW,” the duo star as two jobless actresses Ruth Wilder (Brie) and Debbie Eagen (Gilpin), who find their next gig with the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW). The series is created by Liz Flahive (“Homeland”) and Carly Mensch (“Orange Is the New Black”), and counts Jenji Kohan (“Orange Is the New Black”) among its executive producers.
We caught up with the pair a few months after production. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: So, your agents say, “There’s this show … about female wrestlers …” What’s your immediate reaction?
Brie: When my agents first called me about it, it was the most vague thing. They said, “Jenji Kohan’s doing a new show, it’s about women’s wrestling. It’s about this real show.” And immediately, I pulled some stuff online and watched some stuff about GLOW. I knew nothing about it, and prior to the show knew nothing about the world of wrestling. It had never been a major interest of mine, but for some reason it sounded immediately like the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard.
Gilpin: Yeah, I know Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch from New York and “Nurse Jackie”; we worked together on that. Seeing their name in the headline and them announcing they were doing this show put me at ease and made me really excited.
Q: The opening scene to the series is an audition scene with Ruth, where she boldly and confidently reads the male part because it’s far more interesting than the receptionist part. Could you relate to that fight for a part?
Brie: I’ve never felt more like Ruth than I did auditioning for this show. It really made me fight for this role. I felt so confident and had my thing thought out, and as soon as I got in the car afterward, I would sob and be like, “I don’t know, I feel so insecure in the room, it was so cold.”
Gilpin: Which is so meta. A show that’s a commentary on how ridiculous that process is.
Brie: And then we’re going through it. And Liz and Carly have even said in the process of us going through that, it’s like we became more like the character. Because they did not see me as this character, and I think their thing was, could I see myself as the character?
Gilpin: I remember talking to them before we shot the pilot and sort of nervously said, “I know you guys know me, but I just want to remind you, I like to play characters that have crazy beans inside of them too. And not just the person that’s got it all together.” And they were like, “We know you’ve got crazy beans.”
Q: How did the wrestling inform your acting?
Gilpin: To me, wrestling is such a crazy physical metaphor for what it means to be Betty, for what it means to be a woman. Using your power to take care of someone, in the most powerful possible way. It’s also nice to not feel like “the girl.” Because usually there’s a bunch of guys and a girl. And to not only have a bunch of women in the show, but to be physically close together in a primal way and for it to be so nonsexualized is just so great.