Latest Netflix show has a certain ‘GLOW’
Inside Netflix’s deluxe new office space on Sunset Boulevard in L.A., Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin, the stars of the streaming service’s upcoming female wrestling comedy “GLOW” are deep in conversation about the power of women demanding to be heard. With good reason.
It’s a Wednesday and conservative cable news host Bill O’Reilly has just been forced out of Fox News after a series of sexual harassment allegations. As the blitz of tweets and breaking-news alert pings proliferate outside, the greater context of the development has the actresses rapt.
“It’s a real feminist moment, again, in this country,” says Brie, best known for her roles on “Community” and “Mad Men.”
The turn of events brings an added layer of poignancy to the actual purpose of this conference room gathering: to discuss their females-shouldn’t-be-underestimated comedy.
The series, which premieres today, is inspired by the real Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW), which produced a syndicated professional women’s wrestling TV program that ran from 1986 to 1990. Brie plays Ruth Wilder, a struggling actress in L.A. who finds her way to an audition for what eventually becomes a female wrestling show. Gilpin plays her friend, ex-soap star Debbie Eagan, who begrudgingly joins the misfit posse of body-slamming women.
The show embraces the inherent camp value of its subject and era with frosted lipstick, hammerlocks and even glimpses of a Thomas Guide. But adding some weight to it too is social commentary on the battles, pressures and inequity women faced then (and now).
The girl-power theme of the series not only comes on the heels of the record-breaking box office success of “Wonder Woman,” which has brought in more than $444 million worldwide, but it also arrives at a time when female narratives — and the political and social undertones invariably linked to them — have come into sharp focus in Trump’s America.
“I feel our show is feminist junk food,” says Gilpin, whose other credits include “American Gods” and “Nurse Jackie.” “With all the stuff that’s going on in the world — after I watch the news, read the news, and listen to my podcasts, at the end of the day, am I really going to watch an episode of murder and time travel? With this, you sit down and you watch women find empowerment.”
Created by longtime friends Liz Flahive (“Homeland”) and Carly Mensch (“Orange Is the New Black”), who worked together on “Nurse Jackie,” the idea to explore the lives of women inside and outside a wrestling ring took shape after they watched “GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,” a documentary about the kitschy phenomenon.
“We both had complicated reactions,” Flahive said during a break in production, “which is always a good sign for a story that pulls you in and you’re like —”
“Attracted and repelled,” Mensch finishes. “It was a family of women in all different shapes and sizes and colors, bonding together in this team. But it also felt kind of exploitative in how porn-adjacent it was.”
That night, they emailed Jenji Kohan, whom Mensch had worked with on “Weeds” and “Orange Is the New Black” and is no stranger to inclusive, complicated portrayals of women.
“They emailed with great enthusiasm and I immediately watched (the documentary) and felt it was a great character piece,” says Kohan who signed on as an executive producer. “I love that it really walked the razor’s edge of exploitation and empowerment.”
The real hurdle would come in securing the rights from Ursula Hayden, a former GLOW wrestler (“Babe, the Farmer’s Daughter”) who has operated the company since 2001.
“There was a bit of uneasiness because I wasn’t sure where this was going to go,” recalls Hayden, on the phone from Kernville, Calif. “I wanted to make sure it would be done GLOW style. They assured me that it would be.”
Hayden ultimately served as a consultant on the series and has been promoting the show’s premiere on her social channels and on www.gorgeousladiesofwrestling.com.
Recalling subsequent pitch meetings with executives, Flahive and Mensch say they described it as “A League of Their Own” meets “All That Jazz.”
“I think we boomeranged between sounding like esoteric grad students who talked about exploitation and empowerment and the image of women putting on shoulder pads and equating that with women going into battle,” Mensch says. “And then just geeking out over like, all these women living together as a family, learning skills.”
They also framed it from a lens of being on the cusp of having the first female president.
“It’s taken on this kind of shadow now,” says Mensch. “It was about, ‘Now the time is perfect for women’ to ‘Now we need shows about women.’ You’ll be watching it in a different context, which may change how you see it. I don’t think it changed how we built the stories, though.”
Crafting the world of “GLOW” required copious research. The pair, who wanted to create new characters rather than base them on the original GLOW performers, read biographies of female wrestlers from the ’40s and ’50s, such as “The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend” about female wrestler Mildred Burke.
They came up with 14 female characters. Comedian Marc Maron is the lone male; he stars as Sam Sylvia, the cantankerous director charged with turning them into wrestling stars.
The show’s inherent physicality could have easily led to a land of stunt doubles. But the pair wanted to cast actresses able to hit the mat. They started scouting gymnasts and former athletes — including Kia Stevens, a pro wrestler (“Awesome Kong”) — but didn’t limit themselves to that pool.
They admit, though, being skeptical of Brie’s abilities.
“Full disclosure, and she knows this, we were like, ‘She’s too pretty, there’s no way she’s going to be right for this,’” says Mensch. “We were totally snobby,” agrees Flahive.