- Welcome to Meet Your Nominee.
This is Marya Gullo from The Hollywood Reporter
and I'm here with Betty Gilpin from Glow.
- Yay!
- [Marya] Hi, Betty.
- I didn't know it was called Meet Your Nominee.
- Yeah.
- I should have read the thing.
That's exciting.
- You'll get a whole graphic and everything.
- Oh! (whistles)
- You're nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress
in a Comedy Series
for Glow. - Yeah, yes, it's crazy.
- And it's one of 10 Emmy nominations for Glow this year.
- Yep, I'm so excited for our show.
- How does it feel to be part of that big haul?
- It's a huge honor that I wasn't expecting at all.
It feels like I'm living in an alternate reality right now.
Like if I got Best Renaissance Painter on the Submarine,
that would make me, I'd be like, less shocked about that.
- You had a very touching reply to being nominated, too.
You posted something on Twitter, I believe?
- Yes, yeah, that I was face down on my living room floor
in shock, which I was.
I just wasn't expecting it at all,
and was completely knocked over by the news
and everyone I knew was too.
They were like, we didn't think
that was ever going to happen.
I was like, I know!
Wait, ow!
(laughing)
- Are there any other nominees that you're very excited for?
- Kate McKinnon, I've had a talent
and girl-crush on forever.
I feel like Liberty Belle is in part inspired by her.
Laurie Metcalf, I can't believe
that I would ever be in the same category as her.
She's one the best actors alive.
I just saw her on Broadway in Three Tall Women,
and have seen basically all of her stage work
and I'm obsessed with her.
- If you could sit next to anybody at the Emmys,
who would it be?
- Well, I'm bringing my two brothers
and I'm pretty excited to sit next to them
because they're going to be so out of their element.
Be like, wait, what?
I would like to sit next to Gary Busey at the Emmys.
Just listen to him philosophize
about what's going on around him.
- That would definitely be interesting.
And what about the after-parties?
Who do you want to dance with?
- My brothers.
No, that's weird.
(laughing)
My showrunners actually for Glow,
Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch,
we've been cutting a rug together for many years.
The Nurse Jackie wrap parties were always
just exclusively dancing,
and they were both writers on Nurse Jackie
and us and Edie Falco would always dance
until we had cramps from all the cardio.
- Amazing.
- No networking allowed at those parties, so--
- Nice.
Alright, let's talk about Glow and season two.
- Sure.
- So your character, Debbie Eagan,
she has tapped into a kind of anger
that most women in film don't get to tap into.
- Yeah.
- [Marya] How did that develop?
How did your character develop?
- Yeah I think this season's kind of all about,
for Debbie, all about her rage.
I mean, we're learning societally
all women, you know, have within them
a person who is ready to throw a watermelon
through a window pane in rage.
And I think that, you know, for Debbie
her life was just turned upside down in season one.
And I think she's realizing that when the smoke cleared,
the person that she is now is angrier, stronger, braver
than the person that was there before.
So I think that wrestling, in a weird way,
is this perfect vehicle for her to access and use that rage
in a constructive and strange way.
- And you've written before that it was intense,
the training for the wrestling for the beginning.
And then when you go into season two,
you can really see all the characters improving
with the wrestling skills.
- Yes.
- What is training like for you?
Does it take you back to your theater days?
- I mean...
Yes in that, like, my theater schooling was a lot
of, like, rolling around in your pajamas
and crying about your childhood.
Which we definitely do in wrestling training.
Like, I know you're scared of that move
because of the thing with your parents.
But look at me, you are so much stronger than you were.
So there's some parallels there.
Except that, you know, in acting school then we'd get up
and do, like, a monologue from 'night, Mother,
and in wrestling we're like, alright,
I'm ready to do the suplex now.
So it's different in that way.
But yeah, it's intense.
It feels like a million fender benders in a row.
You know, doing it with 15 other women is, like, okay,
if the 14 people before me can do it
I think I can do it too.
- Have you noticed an everyday strength that you have?
Beyond just the wrestling, has your body changed?
- My body has really changed.
I mean, the way I think about my body has changed
a lot, in many ways.
But I think this job, and wrestling, has made me realize
what a large male gaze representative was in my own brain
telling me things about myself,
and especially in like, the body department,
and what my body's function was.
The male gaze representative in my brain was like,
your body's function is to stay as small and still
and sexy and young as possible,
and then when those things fade,
maybe go live in a tundra and read the classics
because no one's going to want you around anymore.
And I think that wrestling was the first time
where I was like, oh no, I'm not just like,
♪ obliques and nipples and calves and ankles. ♪
I'm actually like, a core, and quads, and knees,
and I have big powerful muscles that do things
like carry me throughout a day and lift my niece
and lift Alison Brie, slam her down
and do things that are powerful and functional
instead of things like, you know, posing.
- [Marya] Mmhmm.
- So I sort of retroactively was like,
oh, I have also not been using my body as much
in my character work as I could have.
I think I was always sort of an actor from the neck up,
and sort of Scared Betty from the neck down,
and using it in my character work, like,
I'm a character from head to toe
instead of just, I'm a character here
and Betty from the neck down.
- Right, right.
Let's talk about your relationship with Alison Brie.
- Yeah.
- First let's start with Ruth and Debbie.
- Yeah.
- At the end of season two, you see kind of a big blowout.
There's a cathartic moment--
- Yes, finally!
- where everything comes to a head, finally.
Do you think that's there's an opportunity now,
in the next season, for some real healing to begin?
- Oh god, I don't know, I mean--
- [Marya] I mean the tension is so great.
- Yes.
- [Marya] You don't want to lose the tension
but at the same time--
- Yeah.
I mean I think that we see them,
when we see them first in season two,
we realize oh, they've sort of skipped this step
of actually talking about what happened
and talking things out and yelling at each other.
They're like, oh, we're just going to use wrestling
as this great excuse to be near each other
without having to like, make real eye contact.
And then that hospital scene, they just explode
at each other necessarily.
So yeah, I wonder, in the future, if they're going to...
I don't know.
I mean, realistically,
I don't think they'll ever get back to,
I mean, Allie and I are always like,
pitching each other what scene it would be.
I'm like, running toward each other in an airport
to a Phil Collins song.
And she's like, or one of our parents dies
and the other one shows up at the funeral,
like Miranda and Steve did.
So we've got all these dramatic ideas, but yeah,
it's not up to us. - It's very much a romance.
It's a will they or won't they
kind of situation. - Yeah,
they're the will they, won't they!
- Like, Moonlighting,
for some reason I'm thinking of Moonlighting.
- Yes.
- So uh, can you describe what the character
of Liberty Belle represents to you?
- Liberty Belle, um...
Liberty Belle is sort of my love-hate letter
to the character that I think that
the entertainment business wanted me and other girls to be.
Or kept writing, sort of like,
and this is the character of the, just,
sweet, beauty queen who's just there for ya.
And you know, that just doesn't really exist.
Even that girl also has inner crazy
and instability and a litany of problems.
So I try to play Liberty Belle as someone trying to be
like a perfect Toddlers and Tiara's Blanche DuBois,
but who has severe instability happening behind the eyes.
- What have you learned the most
about working so closely with Alison?
- Working with Alison has been pretty life-changing for me.
I think seeing the way Allie is on set
has made me sort of retroactively go back
and realize how much I stood in my own way
from just being scared.
Being afraid that I was going to get fired,
or auditioning for the job I already had.
Or being like,
Oh, I don't want to ask that question
because then, you know, the caterer will hate me.
And you know, Allie will just ask the question
and take up space and be the boss.
You know, she's so brave in standing up
for what she needs to do the best work that day,
and it has made me be that way
and I never would be able to play Debbie
without feeling brave and comfortable in it,
and that's because of Alison, completely.
- And now that you've experienced Glow in general,
not just Alison but everybody in the creative team,
the women ensemble cast,
the strong complicated women that you get to play,
do you think your career has fundamentally changed
from this point forward?
- Gosh, I don't know.
I mean I think I always have this healthy dose
of reality, of like, you know,
I'm still making audition tapes on my bathroom floor
'cause that's where the lighting makes me look the youngest.
Like, for something like, Farts Two, the musical.
It's not like I'm getting like... (giggling).
So I think that the way I work has changed.
I think in this apocalyptic time in this world,
I've realized that no one's going to come to my house
and go like, hey, those documents
that you're too scared to send,
and those ideas that you're too scared
to bring out to the world, I'm begging you to see them.
Like that's never going to happen for any of us.
And the people who are braver and have dumber ideas
than us are like, here's my idea.
And you're like, mine is better but I'm just too scared.
Like, Kim Jong-un is comin'.
We'd better like, do all our ideas.
(laughing)
- Yes.
Oh, well, Betty Gilpin, thank you so much for being here.
- That's a great way to close.
- A great way to cap it off.
- Thank you.
- [Marya] So much.
Betty Gilpin. - Thanks.
- [Marya] The show is Glow.
We'll see you at Emmys night.
Glow on Netflix. - I'm so scared!
- Are you scared?
- I mean, it's just not my comfort zone.
The still photographs, I'm scared.
But I'm going to experiment
with playing a character this year.
- Oh! - I'm going to be a--
- What's her name?
- Esmeralda.
We'll see Esmeralda at Emmys night.