NORTH HOLLYWOOD – Emmy season is already in full swing with numerous series having special screenings and Q&A’s to remind Television Academy voters of their favorite programs over the past 10 months. One show that voters likely won’t forget about is Netflix’s “GLOW.” The 80’s set wrestling comedy debuted in June (a month after the close of last year’s qualifying window), but made an impact at the end of 2017 with guild award nominations from SAG, WGA, ACE (editors), Art Directors Guild and the Costume Designers Guild (and a Golden Globe nod for star Alison Brie for good measure). On Friday night the creators and some key members of the cast, including Brie, Marc Maron, Betty Gilpin, Sydelle Noel, and Britney Young, reunited at the Television Academy’s gorgeous Saban Media Center to reflect on the first season and tease what’s coming up next.
READ MORE: Netflix’s ‘GLOW’ shines after a slow start [Review]
Creators Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive hadn’t heard about the short-lived women’s wrestling program, but it was the 2012 documentary “GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling” that provided the initial inspiration.
“When we pitched the show at Netflix we were like, ‘This is a great time for women. We are about to have our first female President.’ That was our opener,” Flahive notes. “Obviously things changed and I think the show had the room to explore the opposite of what we had to explore at the beginning”
The casting process was extensive with each actress having to do some sort of physical activity to prove they could eventually participate in the choreographed wrestling scenes. After getting the gig Brie recalls, “The first thing we learned in wrestling were somersaults. It was like ‘Oh, my god. Look what we’re doing! We’re rolling on the ground!’”
Brie is best known for her roles on “Community” and “Mad Men,” but describes playing the semi-desperate actress turned TV wrestler Ruth Wilder as “the dream of dream jobs.”
“It’s so fulfilling in every way you can imagine and it starts from the top because the material is incredible and Liz and Carly are amazing bosses. And, very open and very excited about everything,” Brie says. “The story and the material are just great. The characters while we’re playing these larger than live characters in the ring we also get to play grounded real emotions in their day to day lives and that’s exciting. Then you add how to wrestle and learning this crazy new skill. 14 women who were up for anything and everybody came in totally fearless, ready to do something that no one had ever done before except for Kia Stevens, who is a pro wrestler, who couldn’t have been more gratuitous and lovely with us, and then you have a cast of amazing women, and Marc, and the environment we were working in was really fun and really intimate and because we all learned to wrestle together and had to learn who to be really vulnerable with each other right away.”