美国国家公共电台 NPR 'GLOW' Co-Creators Explain Why Wrestling Is Like Greek Theater

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

It's time for some '80s.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GLOW")

BETTY GILPIN: (As Liberty Belle 1) I'd like to call on the power of my three favorite Americans - Ronald Reagan, Larry Bird and Jesus Christ himself.

(CHEERING)

MCEVERS: This is a scene from the new Netflix show "GLOW," GLOW as in Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. The actor Betty Gilpin plays a wrestling character named Liberty Belle, and she's about to take on her Russian rival in the ring.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GLOW")

ALISON BRIE: (As Zoya the Destroyer) I will neuter all your pet dogs and fill your swimming pools with borscht.

(BOOING)

MCEVERS: The characters are of course stereotypes 2. That's the deal with professional wrestling. But that is exactly what got the creators of this show excited about telling the story. Turns out "GLOW" was a real thing. It was a syndicated TV show in the '80s. And then more recently there was a documentary about that show. And now there's a show about the show. The documentary is what got "GLOW's" creators, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, into the whole thing. They say professional wrestling was just better in the '80s.

CARLY MENSCH: It was less, like, violent.

LIZ FLAHIVE: And less slick, too. There was more comedy in the personas...

MENSCH: And story, yeah.

FLAHIVE: ...And story. And it was silly at times, too, in ways that I think maybe wrestling isn't as silly now.

MENSCH: And for people who don't know wrestling, like, that clarity was also really helpful. For us, people like the Iron Sheik, who was, like, you know, a huge villain 3 in the '80s, that just made sense in a way that people who are trying for the first time ever to tell wrestling stories - that felt like a much easier and more fun entry point for us than kind of, like, Liz and I will watch a wrestling match now and we'll actually make it 15 minutes in and still have no clue who the good guy or the bad guy is.

MCEVERS: Oh. It's kind of interesting, too. When you're talking about how wrestling was different in the '80s, you're kind of - you're, like, taking seriously this thing that people definitely nowadays do not take seriously - right? - this WWF style of, like, fake, theatrical 4 wrestling. What is it about the theatrics of it that interested you?

MENSCH: I mean, it's almost like Greek theater in that it's like you're telling stories on a scale that, like, we're not used to but that's really exciting, that can cross cultures, can cross languages. From one side, if you're being ungenerous, you can say it's super reductive. And then from the other side you could say it's kind of like storytelling at its most potently 5 inclusive and epic 6. And if you can figure out how to harness that, I think that's exciting.

MCEVERS: When you talk about being reductive, I mean, I think what happens is that the characters are all these types, right? I mean, that's what has to happen in the world of wrestling. You have become somebody that's, like, easy for people to, like, hang on to. And of course, because this is the '80s, like, these types are potentially very offensive to people who are watching. There's - like, the Asian character's named Fortune Cookie. The Indian girl plays an Arab terrorist named Beirut.

MENSCH: Yeah.

MCEVERS: Let's just, like, listen to a clip of them, like, describing themselves.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GLOW")

ELLEN WONG: (As Fortune Cookie) I am one who is cute like panther. I'm in danger. Help me. Save me. (Laughter) Tricked you because I am fast like dragon. I am Fortune Cookie and Asian.

MENSCH: Yes, our names are on this.

(LAUGHTER)

MCEVERS: Exactly. You own this. I mean, so - right, so you knew you were going to have to do this.

FLAHIVE: Yeah.

MCEVERS: What were the conversations about how to, like, do it well?

FLAHIVE: You know, a lot of it was about keeping our eye on the characters' experience of having to play these characters, you know? I mean I think the emotional honesty of an actress being asked to do this and how they grapple with that is a big part of our story.

MCEVERS: Yeah. I mean there's times when the characters comment on their characters, right? They say, like, hang on a second. This is racist 7.

MENSCH: Yeah.

MCEVERS: There's a character whose name is Welfare Queen. And she's like, oh, man, is this bad? Should I be doing this? Like, she is able to take a moment to question that, right?

MENSCH: And Welfare queen - we were lucky because she's played by Kia Stevens, who's an actual professional wrestler 9. You know, we would check in with her a lot and, you know, she would tell us 'cause she's had to play tons of offensive things. And this - like, Welfare Queen is perfectly 10 in line with, like, the requests that she gets.

MCEVERS: Right. I mean, I think one thing - for people who haven't seen the show, these 10 episodes, a lot of it is just them, like, putting this whole thing together. I mean, it's literally 11 the whole thing from the beginning. We're not going straight into the ring.

MENSCH: Yeah.

MCEVERS: And there's this great scene. One of the main characters, who's played by Alison Brie, she's been working on figuring out what her character is. And she's landed on this idea of a - being a Russian villain, Zoya the Destroyer, who would be pitted against this other character named Liberty Belle, who's played amazingly by Betty Gilpin. And I just want to play a clip of the first time these two kind of try out these characters together.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GLOW")

BRIE: (As Zoya the Destroyer) You think you're so great with your decadent 12 fast food and your disgusting football, which is wrong name for this sport because football is soccer.

GILPIN: (As Liberty Belle) In America, we're free.

BRIE: (As Zoya the Destroyer) In Soviet 13 Union, we eat stars and stripes for breakfast.

MCEVERS: It's so "Rocky IV" (laughter). Isn't it "Rocky IV"?

MENSCH: "Rocky IV" we definitely watched.

FLAHIVE: Oh, yeah.

MCEVERS: And we should say that that whole scene takes place. I mean they're there in the ring.

MENSCH: Yeah.

FLAHIVE: Yeah.

MENSCH: You hear the sort of wobbly ropes and...

MCEVERS: Yep.

FLAHIVE: Yeah.

MCEVERS: And their kind of circling each other, like, you know, villains 14 are supposed to do as they fling insults at one another. And then it takes many episodes for them to kind of learn how to physically 15 fight each other.

MENSCH: Yeah.

MCEVERS: And you watch them learning and practicing it over and over and over again. These of course are two people who in real life don't like each other, also and so they're kind of navigating 16 that.

MENSCH: And then in real, real life, they love each other...

MCEVERS: (Laughter) Right.

MENSCH: ...Which is actually, like, a really helpful dimension...

MCEVERS: Nice.

MENSCH: ...Because they trust each other so much that even though you have to watch them go on this journey of not wanting to touch each other's bodies, they're very much taking care of each other's bodies. And no one's ever actually slamming someone's head into a...

MCEVERS: Right. I understand that they learned...

MENSCH: ...A post.

MCEVERS: ...A lot of the stunts 17 as they went long and did do some of them themselves.

MENSCH: All of them.

FLAHIVE: All of them, yeah.

MCEVERS: Wow.

MENSCH: I mean from the beginning, we knew that in order to tell this, like, authentic 18 story and to embrace the kind of funny, bad-news-bears side of learning something totally new...

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

MENSCH: ...That it would be smart for us to go really slow this first season and actually let our actresses learn how to wrestle 8 at the same pace that their characters were learning.

FLAHIVE: And it did something to the women, too, I think. You know, we had them training in a boot camp for three weeks before we started shooting. And just the physical intimacy 19 that they all experienced together and the idea that they had to learn something as a group I think bonded 20 them deeply. And you know, the level of trust they all establish with each other in the ring was really helpful to us as we filmed the whole season.

MCEVERS: I understand you guys are still waiting to hear whether or not there's going to be a second season, but it just seems like there's so many directions this could go, right? Are you going to follow the original story of the original "GLOW," or are you going to kind of go off on your own at this point?

FLAHIVE: I feel like we've just scratched the surface on a lot of these women. And they're incredible to play with as actors and as characters. So - and we've got a lot of them.

MCEVERS: Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, thank you so much.

FLAHIVE: Thank you.

MENSCH: Thanks.

MCEVERS: And "GLOW," all 10 episodes, is available now on Netflix.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOSS OF AURA'S "SWEAT")