Listen: Betty Gilpin Talks ‘Glow’s’ ‘Scalding Hot’ Three-Way and Getting Ready to Play Ann Coulter

Marc Malkin
·4 min read

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Betty Gilpin insists she doesn’t know exactly what’s going happen during the fourth and final season of “Glow.” The Netflix series had started production on the season when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

“I know generally what’s going to happen,” Gilpin, who has earned two Emmy nominations for work as Debbie Eagan on the show, says during an appearance on Thursday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.” “We were about an episode and a half into filming when we got shut down. Where I’m staying has a view of our studio so I just kind of wave to it every once in a while, all our weird costumes waiting for us, collecting dust. I always say that as a friend of Debbie, I hope she finds peace, and as the actress playing Debbie, I hope she continues to be unstable and insane because that’s a fun work day for me.”

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Talking about fun days at work, Gilpin recalled some of Season 3’s most memorable scenes, including a three-way romp with Bash Howard (Chris Lowell) and his wife, Rhonda Howard (Kate Nash), and a Vegas gigolo (Nick Clifford). “Scalding hot!” Gilpin said. “I was watching it and was like, ‘Oh my god!’”

In the same episode, Geena Davis, who plays Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, appears in a Las Vegas showgirl costume during an AIDS fundraiser. At the time of filming, Gilpin was shooting “Glow” and the horror-thriller “The Hunt” simultaneously. “That’s the only thing that could follow a threesome scene, is Geena Davis in a full showgirls costume,” she recalled. “During that episode is when I started filming ‘The Hunt.’ I went and filmed a week of ‘The Hunt’ and then came back for episode nine and 10 and then went back to ‘The Hunt,’ so I definitely felt very split personality. But I remember getting off a plane and going to set and then seeing Geena Davis in that costume. Like, what is this alternate reality that I’ve entered? I’m hallucinating.”

Bash also came out as gay last season. In one scene, he lays his head in Debbie’s lap and cries. As emotional and heavy as the scene was, Gilpin also happened to be wearing a Rosemary Clooney-like Christmas dress. “I love that scene so much and I just think nobody could play that part but Chris Lowell,” Gilpin said. “I think the crazy vaudevillian heights that he goes to, and then in the next scene, or line, grounds it so devastatingly, I just think his performance is unbelievable. I cannot keep it together with him. We make each other laugh so hard. I think that scene is so devastating, [but] I’m in the Rosemary Clooney dress. I was like, ‘Chris, I’m so sorry I’m in this costume when you have this scene, just don’t look at me.’”

Hopefully, when productions are allowed to start rolling again, Gilpin will be on set of the next season of Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story,” about the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and presidential impeachment. Gilpin is set to play right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter. “To make the audition tape I watched a bunch of her interviews and listened to her audiobooks. Her voice is so specific so I’m trying to get it down,” Gilpin said.

As for her personal feelings about Coulter, Gilpin remains tight-lipped. “I think that an authentic portrayal is what I’m going for,” she said. “I don’t want to comment on her. I just want to present her as she is. So that’s what I’ll say about that.”

Hear the full interview with Gilpin above. You can also listen to “The Big Ticket” at iHeartRadio or wherever you download you favorite podcasts.

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