GLOW star Betty Gilpin has written a moving tribute to the show following its cancellation.
Netflix confirmed earlier this week that the show would not be returning for season four — despite filming having already begun and the scripts being completed.
Gilpin, who played Debbie Eagan in the show, has now penned a eulogy for Vanity Fair. “GLOW was cancelled. I am sad. It was the best job I’ll ever have,” she began.
“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.”
Commenting on the cancellation, Gilpin continued: “Apparently numbers-wise, GLOW really only appealed to men in kimonos and women in cat hair, who, as far as I’m concerned, are the beating heart of the arts and the reason to keep waking up.”
The actress nodded to the show’s creators, writing: “Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, I will be forever grateful to you. You changed my life. It’s sad and weird to end this way. But we did get to do it 30 times.”
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Gilpin also honoured the late filmmaker Lynn Shelton, who passed away earlier this year and had directed a number of GLOW episodes. The actress praised “the mystical eye of the late Lynn Shelton, who directed our final episode as she did countless others—never treating our poems like cartoons.”
Ending her essay, Gilpin wrote on her co-star Alison Brie, who played Ruth Wilder, Debbie’s best friend. “In a world with so much wickedness, I am so very grateful I got to spend three years in Oz,” she said. “And in a real backhanded All About Eve move, in this metaphor I’m going to cast myself as Dorothy and Alison Brie as the Scarecrow. Because of course I’m going to miss you most of all.”
Seasons one to three of GLOW is streaming now on Netflix.