Inside GLOW’s feminist ‘bio-dome’
Actress talks production culture as Season 2 tackles sexism
Betty Gilpin describes the set of her Netflix comedy GLOW as “a feminist monastery bio-dome.” Yes, that’s a positive description. Gilpin and her character, newly single mom and former soap star Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan, returned last Friday for a second season of the colourful show about the Gorgeous Ladies of
Wrestling, a real 1980s women’s professional wrestling promotion. The new
GLOW was created by women and features mostly women as directors, actors and writers.
But Gilpin notes that the show, with its many and layered female roles, is something of an anomaly in Hollywood. “Once we wrap, I go back in the world (and) it’s back to auditioning for mute blow-up doll No. 7,” she says.
Gilpin, 31, is only half-joking about the tribulations of being a woman in Hollywood. Throughout her acting career (which includes The Good Wife, Nurse
Jackie and Fringe) she’s auditioned for parts she saw as one-dimensional, such as “the sexy nurse who the guy just sort of sexually harasses and you’re supposed to find the male character hilarious.”
And she’s been mistreated on a set: “I’ve had many experiences where you realize at the beginning of the job that the male presence on set is establishing a dynamic with you that you do not want any part of: ‘Oh here comes a hand on my back, there it is. There’s the (back) rub, there it starts.’ ” Gilpin’s character, Debbie, can relate. Last season, Debbie joined a wrestling show, left her husband and struggled to repair her friendship with her in-thering enemy, Ruth “Zoya the Destroya” Wilder (Alison Brie). In10 new episodes, she confronts rampant sexism as she becomes the all-American star and producer of her wrestling show.
Debbie plans meetings with male coproducers who don’t show up, makes suggestions that are ignored and is told “that’s the longest that I’ve ever let a woman who I’m not sleeping with speak” by her show’s director, Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron).
Debbie becomes so accustomed to the chauvinistic culture of show business that she chastises Ruth for ditching an executive who was about to make a move on her.
“You’re supposed to make him think that you might (have sex with) him,” Debbie cries. “This is how the business works, Ruth. You have to pretend to like it until you don’t have to anymore!”
Gilpin can relate to that scene: “Particularly for being an actress when you’re getting sexually harassed, every job is kind of an island of time that you just have to get through the (awful) parts of that so you can check the ‘my dream’ boxes,” she says. “What’s laughing at a few more jokes at the craft table, if it means you’re not going to get fired?”
GLOW creators Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive, former playwrights turned TV writers, don’t have the same connection with Gilpin’s character.
“Betty has been telling a lot of stories that are very enlightening to us,” says Mensch, who worked as a writer on Weeds, created by Jenji Kohan. And in their second season of GLOW, they’ve added to their mostly female crew, which now includes a female-led stunt department and two female assistant directors.
“Frankly, it wasn’t an anomaly for us to have women leading this show,” Mensch says. “We stand on the shoulders of women like Jenji. We came up in their (writers) rooms and on their sets. We’re a part of that change (and) never tolerated (bad behaviour).”
But to Gilpin, spending time on the set is like being part of an “experimental futuristic society” in which men don’t leer at her in a skin-tight wrestling costume, and she doesn’t feel the need to compliment a director to ensure an extra take.
Though most sets aren’t like GLOW, the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have improved the climate at many. “There is something to prey on and use to our advantage that people are so terrified of appearing exclusionary (in today’s age),” Gilpin says. “It’s the Salem Witch Trials of being woke.”
In fact, just a month ago while filming horror movie The Grudge, Gilpin considered her young male producers’ fear of ignorance and did something she wouldn’t have.
Gilpin plays a woman who’s older and five months pregnant. “There were a bunch of lines about it being a geriatric pregnancy,” Gilpin says.
The actress worried that a 30-something female viewer would be offended. So she complained to the young male filmmakers, who were surprisingly receptive, she says, immediately excising the dialogue.
“If it was five years ago, I never would have said anything. I was way too scared and way too cognizant, and would’ve played the part (as is) because jobs are hard to get,” Gilpin says. But because of “what’s globally happening in terms of gender and the world … it kind of culls you out of your own fear.”
Hopefully, other Debbies will feel that kind of bravery soon, too.