GLOW Season 3 Casts Geena Davis
The hit Netflix comedy GLOW just scored itself some heavyweight talent.
Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis will be appearing in five of the third season's ten episodes as the awesomely-named Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, the director of entertainment at the Fan-Tan hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where the new batch of episodes will take place. (via Deadline)
In case you're not familiar with GLOW (and if this is the case, you're missing out), the '80s-set series is a fictionalized account of the rise of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a promotion that staged live events and filmed them for broadcast late in that decade. The series' creators Liz Flahive and Carly Black were inspired by the 2012 documentary GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, which offered an in-depth look at what was then a little-remembered chapter in the history of the sport. The show is executive produced by Jenji Kohan of Weeds and Orange is the New Black fame.
The first two seasons of GLOW detailed the struggles of its colorful cast of L.A.-based characters to overcome competition, injuries, and sexism in their bids to become stars in the famously male-dominated world of pro wrestling. At the second season's conclusion, the promotion was in danger of being put out to pasture when its sponsor network decided to pull the plug, and the ladies' scramble to attract the attention of new producers proved fruitless. However, the day was temporarily saved when strip club owner Ray (Horatio Sanz) offered to move the proceedings to the Riviera hotel and casino in Las Vegas, and this is where season three's action will resume.
The show will benefit mightily from the presence of Davis, a veteran actress who has proven herself adept at everything from comedy (Beetlejuice) to action (The Long Kiss Goodnight) to drama (The Accidental Tourist, the role that netted her an Oscar). She's probably best-remembered for her stellar performance in Ridley Scott's 1991 drama Thelma and Louise opposite Susan Sarandon, the film that pretty much invented the downbeat-yet-somehow-uplifting ending and introduced the world at large to a handsome young actor by the name of Brad Pitt.
Davis' big-screen fortunes were unfortunately dealt a serious blow by her appearance in the 1995 film Cutthroat Island, an ill-advised would-be blockbuster that tanked incredibly hard at the box office and was solely responsible for the unceremonious death of its studio, Carolco Pictures. In the intervening years, however, she's continued to work steadily in smaller features and television. She held down the lead role of President Mackenzie Allen in the Stephen Bochco-produced ABC drama series Commander in Chief in 2005 and 2006, and in recent years she's popped up in the Fox horror anthology The Exorcist and in a recurring role in the long-running ABC drama Grey's Anatomy.
Davis joins a talented cast which, over GLOW's first two seasons, consistently brought the funny while imbuing their characters with a great deal of emotional depth. It includes: Alison Brie (Bojack Horseman) as Ruth "Zoya the Destroya" Wilder; Betty Gilpin (Isn't It Romantic) as Debbie "Liberty Belle" Eagan; British musician Kate Nash as Rhonda "Brittanica" Richardson; Britney Young (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) as Carmen "Machu Picchu" Wade; Sydelle Noel (Black Panther) as Cherry "Black Magic" Bang; Ellen Wong (The Void) as Jenny "Fortune Cookie" Chey; and comedian and podcaster Marc Maron as GLOW's director, Sam Sylvia.
Although the series is loosely based on the actual Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, Flahive has said that we can expect to see the series diverge more and more from real-world events as the series progresses. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter last year, the creator said, "We are charting a new path. The more seasons we go on, the further we go from the original and that's based on the fact that we created very different characters, and now we follow our characters."
This can only be a good thing, because those characters are as compelling as they are hilarious. We'll see what Flahive, Black, Kohan, and their amazing cast have in store for us when GLOW season three drops on Netflix on August 9.