GLOW’s Britney Young talks season 3 storylines and surprises
The third season of GLOW premiered Aug. 9 on Netflix and fan favorite Britney Young took some time to talk with FanSided about Carmen and the new season.
In the first two seasons of GLOW, fans could expect lots of wrestling, deep emotional scenes between the trio of Betty Gilpin, Alison Brie and Marc Maron and lots of laughs. While some of that is true for season 3, GLOW takes the focus off its leads — and wrestling — and let’s the rest of its cast shine. Adding in that the storyline has the ladies move from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and it’s almost a brand new show.
“It felt a lot like season 1 where we came in and we had new sets, locations, costumes and a couple brand new characters so it definitely had that feel of starting from the beginning,” said Britney Young, who plays Carmen Wade, who in turn plays Machu Picchu, in the show. “I’ve been getting a lot of tweets from people saying this is a different show and I’m like, ‘go back and read all of our interviews, all of us girls said this season was different.'”
One of the most notable changes to season 3 was the move away from focusing on the action in the ring to the development of each character in the show. Instead of viewing the show mostly from the viewpoint of Ruth, Debbie or Sam, the majority of the supporting cast all had a signature moment throughout the season.
It gave GLOW more depth at a stage when Netflix shows tend to get stuck in a creative rut. That was displayed in full force in episode 5 “Freaky Tuesday,” when the GLOW wrestlers swap characters with each other creating a chaotic but wildly fun episode. It was also the first episode of the season where wrestling was the focal point.
“It was such a blessing to be able to develop those characters, especially to develop more characters, but we definitely did miss the wrestling about halfway through,” Young said. So when episode 5 came around it really was a blast for all of us to switch characters and get back in the wrestling ring.”
The lack of wrestling has been one of the biggest talking points about this season, but when GLOW started the reason some people might’ve stayed away from watching was because it was a show about wrestling.
“It’s really funny to see people react to the no wrestling because I feel like one of the reasons a lot of people didn’t gravitate towards the show originally was that they were like ‘Oh I don’t like wrestling I don’t want to watch a show about wrestling,'” Young said. “Now that we’ve got everyone now they’re like, ‘where’s the wrestling.'”
Along with a shift to take the focus off wrestling, season 3 introduces new characters and leans further into the ’80s by focusing on some heavier themes throughout the season.
The first episode kicks off with the GLOW ladies witnessing the Challenger disaster in 1986, and throughout the season touches on the AIDS crisis, homophobia, sexism and racism that were just as much a part of the ’80s as the big hair and pop culture references.
Some shows — especially comedies — set in the ’80s would shy away from dealing with heavier topics, but GLOW addresses them head on, and handles it with the perfect touch.
“One thing about our show is we want to try to immerse ourselves into the time period as authentically as we can, and part of being authentic is to bring up those darker issues,” Young said. “We’re really trying to be like ‘hey this is real life,’ they were something that these women dealt with and society as a whole dealt with in the ’80s, and unfortunately we’re still dealing with some of those things now in 2019.”
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With all the twists and turns season 3 takes the finale ends with a cliffhanger just as season 2 did and it left a lot of the characters’ storylines up in the air. For Young’s character Carmen, her return could be something fans will have to wait to see.
“I hope she’s in season 4 let’s just throw that out there,” Young said. “I would really love for her to go wrestle with her brother and be successful on the circuit and finally obtain the goal she’s been searching for and also that she’s been changing her life for.”