‘GLOW’ actress knows hard life of pro wrestling

true-to-life. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: In Season 3, Tamme is faced with questions about retiring. Considering your years of experience in wrestling, is it hard to walk away?

A: It’s so, so hard. Not just from the fact that once wrestling gets into your blood, it rarely leaves and sometimes you just have that need to get out there in front of a live audience. But also from a financial aspect: There are some wrestlers I know who are wrestling in their 60s, because they can’t give it up. Some wrestlers would totally give it up if they could afford to — they wouldn’t sacrifice their bodies anymore. But the health-care system in professional wrestling outside of “All Elite Wrestling,” which provides health care for its wrestlers, is atrocious.

Q: Despite the danger, people keep wrestling. What is so addicting about it?

A: I think there’s nothing like performing in front of a live audience. That sense of approval and validation has a lot to do with why people don’t quit. They stay and just need to hear that validation one more time.

Q: This season also touches on the idea of isolation and how people who travel for work handle being away from home so much. What went into portraying the odd life of a pro wrestler on the road?

A: When Yolanda goes to try to get her hair done and it turns into an adventure to find a hair salon, that was so relatable. I wrestled in Japan for six years and felt extremely isolated, because the country was not my own, the language was not my own, the food was not my own. I hardly saw people that looked like me. It was extremely isolating.