‘GLOW’ Star Kimmy Gatewood Talks Season 2, the ‘Bizarre Dance’ of Wrestling

Inside the GLOW ring, Beatdown Biddies Stacey Beswick and Dawn Rivecca are two halves of one hairsprayed whole. Off screen, the same could be said for Kimmy Gatewood and Rebekka Johnson, the comedy duo who created the larger-than-life characters.

Gatewood opened up about the Biddies’ dynamic and GLOW Season 2 in an exclusive interview with PopCulture prior to the Friday, June 29 Netflix premiere.

“At the time, they were looking for people who were really best friends and really comedy partners,” she said of the audition process prior to Season 1. “Which, we just happen to be those things, but thought it was a longshot.”

The pair ended up auditioning sans script with a 10-minute showcase of characters they made up on the fly, starting with a faux dating service tape and ending with a rendition of “Jellicle Songs” from the musical Cats.

With a first impression like that, it’s no surprise that the two were given freedom to create their wrestling duo, who started off as stand-up comics before they were fully crystallized as the glam rock girls that appear in the series.

Working on the show was “mind-blowing,” Gatewood said, especially as she remembers Saturday mornings watching the original GLOW as a kid.

“The show was so strange when you were growing up, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of it,” she told PopCulture. “It’s like, your Saved By the Bell and then Saturday morning cartoons and then the WWE would be on, or the WWF at the time, and then GLOW would come on and you were like, ‘This is part sketch comedy, part wrestling,’ and it looked kind of scrappy and dangerous.”

She didn’t know that years later, she would be learning the same kind of wrestling techniques herself, as the entire cast does all their own stunts.

“You wonder why anyone would wrestle because it’s so punishing on your body,” she said. “And then you do it and you feel so empowered. It’s like this weird dance that you learn to do with a partner, and it’s so fun that I didn’t think I would be able to lift another human being and throw them, but because of the teamwork and the bizarre dance that wrestling is, you can do it! I can do it now!”

She even was coined “Kimmy One Time” due to her ability to get moves down pat.

“It’s like I was born to be a wrestler or something!” she told PopCulture. “I don’t look the type, but it’s not necessarily about strength, but coordination. Trust and just pure emptying your brain and saying, ‘yes,’ and doing it.”

Season 2 is picking right up after the end of Season 1, when the ladies put on the first official GLOW showcase, and are getting picked up for their own television show. While some characters are less comfortable with their new lives in the spotlight, Gatewood said Dawn and Stacey are more than happy with their newfound celebrity.

“It kind of happened that they’ve become celebrities, and people start to change when that dynamic happens,” she teased to PopCulture. “So Dawn and Stacey, who are hairdressers, who didn’t really know what they wanted out of life, are now obsessed with wrestling, like everyone else. And it starts to get equally competitive which I think is slightly out of their nature, they just wanna have fun all the time.”

Gatewood also teased a twist mid-season that is “going to just pull the rug from right under your feet,” adding, “It’s totally insane.”

GLOW Season 2 drops on Netflix Friday, June 29.

Photo credit: Netflix, Mandee Johnson