Girl Power
THE PREMISE of the 10-episode Netflix series
Glow— a 1980s comedy set behind the scenes of a women’s professional wrestling show that blends fake grappling and farcical sketches—sounds absurd, but it is based on an actual TV show that aired for four seasons, beginning in 1986. The highly camp Gorgeous Ladies of
Wrestling featured caricature competitors with names like Princess Darkness, Matilda the Hun and Mount Fiji, a lei-wearing island girl. The show’s creators, David Mclane and Matt Cimber, chose the 12 competitors, most of them aspiring models and “actresses,” for attributes other than their wrestling ability. The coach on the series would train them hard for six weeks and organize them into teams, like the Bad Girls and the Good Girls, run by Jackie Stallone, Sylvester’s mother and owner of the womenonly Los Angeles gym Barbarella’s. Who could resist such a premise?
Glow’s creators, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch (producers of Nurse
Jackie), and executive producer Jenji Kohan (creator of Orange Is
the New Black) certainly couldn’t. And neither could the game Alison Brie ( Community, Mad
Men), who tops a cast of mostly unknowns. Like her character, Ruth, Brie had zero wrestling experience and spent four weeks before shooting training under Chavo Guerrero Jr.—whose uncle Mando Guerrero was the trainer on the original Gorgeous
Ladies of Wrestling. “I’m great at getting bodyslammed,” says Brie, who somehow makes glitter eye shadow, big hair and neon spandex alluring. “There were a lot of Epsom salt baths” to soothe aches and pains, adds the actress, who didn’t suffer any serious injuries, except perhaps an olfactory assault. “You’re doing such intense moves and getting the wind knocked out of you, and there were some moments where different girls, myself included, would accidentally pass gas. An audible fart would slip, and we’d all just lose our minds laughing.”
The wrestling in Glow may not be great, but it’s not supposed to be—at least not yet. “I’m revved up,” says Brie. “I’m like, ‘What if we go to secret wrestling camp and learn some crazy moves and bring them back for season two?’”