PWInsider - WWE News, Wrestling News, WWE

CREATORS OF NETFLIX'S 'GLOW' DISCUSS SERIES' ABRUPT CANCELLATION AS THEY FILMED FINAL SEASON

Liz Flavine and Carly Mensch were interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter today about their latest project, Roar, with the conversation eventually turning to Netflix's abrupt cancellation of the planned fourth and final season of GLOW as they were several episodes into shooting the season.

Flahive commented, "We knew stuff about GLOW would come up when we’re talking about another show. We were canceled during the height of a pandemic, when there were so many horrible losses in the world. We were incredibly sad not to get to make that final season in a pretty profound way. But things were just so much bigger than that. They always are. But, at that moment, there was just so much loss and change.  There are many times when the place you start making a show changes as you continue to make the show. I think it’s fair to say that kind of happened at Netflix with us. Also, initially, I think we had a really great creative time there. We got to do what we wanted with that show and make it exactly as we intended to make it. That’s something a lot of people making their first show don’t get to say. It’s a different place now. And I don’t think we’re the only people to have felt that change. It’s weird. I still think about those characters. I still think about that season every once in a while. Like my brain tricks me into thinking, in a weird grief way, that I’m still gonna get to make it. We both have that weird phantom limb feeling about it."

Mensch noted, "It’s an unfinished, unsettled feeling. There was definitely no closure. Two years later, we’re in the acceptance phase. It happened. But there’s also this strange dissonance because we got very far into making that season. We wrote most of it. We filmed two episodes. Sometimes, when you’re making something, you forget that the world hasn’t seen it. It feels so real. I feel like it exists. And then I remember it’s just a private version that never made it — like a stillbirth.  Liz and I sometimes take solace in the fact that it’s the most underdog move ever to get canceled in the same fashion as the show that you’re based on. The original GLOW, in the eighties, got ripped from the airwaves ahead of its time. We’re at least in good company."

GLOW told the fictional story of Ruth Wilder (Brie) a struggling actress in Los Angeles who finds one last chance for stardom when she’s hired to become one of the stars of GLOW, a fledgling women's wrestling series.  Unfortunately, Ruth must compete with her former best friend Debbie "Liberty Bell" Eagan (Betty Gilpin), a former soap actress. Meanwhile, world-weary washed-up film director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) has to create, train and maintain this eclectic troupe of women while trying to get the series off the ground.   

The series' fourth season began filming in February 2020 but production was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic the next month.  They had completed the filming of two episodes at the time of the shutdown.

The first season of GLOW, a fictional period piece set in the 1980s based on the original David McLane Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling promotion, was named the Best TV series of 2017 by Entertainment Weekly.     Among those featured in the cast were Kia "Awesome Kong" Stevens, who consistently stole her scenes as Tamme Dawson aka The Welfare Queen and delivered an amazing performance in the fourth episode of Season Two.  That episode was named by Entertainment Weekly as the best TV episode of any series in 2018.

Over the course of it's life the series won 3 Emmys and scored 18 nominations total.

The series scored two Emmy wins in 2018   GLOW's Stunt Coordinator Shauna Duggins won the Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or Variety Program, becoming the first woman in history to score the accolade since it was instituted in 2002.  The series also captured the Emmy for Outstanding Production Design For A Narrative Program (Half-Hour or Less).  The series was nominated for seven other Emmys that year as well.  

In 2019, the series won an Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy or Variety Program.  That year, the series was also nominated for Emmys in Outstanding Makeup for a Single-Camera Series (Non-Prosthetic), Outstanding Hairstyling for a Single-Camera Series and Outstanding Period Costumes.

Gilpin was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series the 2020 Emmy Awards, the second year in a row that Gilpin received that nomination.  GLOW also received nominations in two additional categories kin the 2020 Emmys for Outstanding Production design for a narrative program (half-hour) for the episode "Up, Up, Up" and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama (Half-Hour) for the episode "The Libertines."    Those nominations were from the show's third, final season.

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!

• Tweet