‘GLOW’ Star Betty Gilpin Breaks Silence on Cancellation

News surfaced on Monday that the wrestling-centric series GLOW will not return for the previously-announced fourth season. Netflix canceled the series amid the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting a response from one of its stars. Betty Gilpin wrote a heartfelt eulogy to the series in Variety.

“GLOW was canceled. I am sad. It was the best job I’ll ever have,” Gilpin wrote. “Our business is a strange mix of attempting childhood dreams to a room full of asleep people and shirking dignity for awake tomato-throwers for rent. This was one of those extremely rare times where we got to do the dream for awake people. And it didn’t disappear in an audition room or unsent email. We did it on a show, recorded it all, I swear. Thirty episodes.

“[…] Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, I will be forever grateful to you. You changed my life,” Gilpin continued. “It’s sad and weird to end this way. But we did get to do it 30 times. I mean, I cried a lot on that subway. I never thought I’d get to do it once. But it’s a pandemic and Rome is burning, and I bet you that while Rome fell, someone had a great stone-tablet niche magazine that got canceled. Honestly? It’s okay.”

As Gilpin continued to explain, GLOW had a very specific audience consisting of “men in kimonos and women in cat hair.” These fans are what Gilpin called the beating heart of the arts. She also said that love letters to these “misfits” are what took Netflix from a DVD distributor to what it is today.

Gilpin is not the only star speaking out about GLOW in the wake of its cancellation. Comedian Marc Maron, who played Sam Sylvia, said that Netflix should finish the story. He called for a GLOW movie in a video posted on social media.

“What they should do is let us make a movie,” Maron said. “Let us wrap it up a two-hour Netflix movie. They had the whole season laid out. We know where it’s going to go. Why don’t you give the showrunners and the writers and the cast an opportunity to finish the story in a movie? I think that would be the best thing. Then they can renavigate.”

The wrestling-focused series found considerable success on Netflix throughout the first three seasons. GLOW received nominations for 15 Emmy Awards, winning three of them. The series also accrued a 92% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.