‘GLOW’ Star Betty Gilpin Has A ‘Muppets Take Manhattan’ Secret

Of all the theatrical flourishes in GLOW Season 2, perhaps none is more deliriously fun than when Bash (Chris Lowell) and Debbie (Betty Gilpin) steal their promotional strategy from The Muppets Take Manhattan to sell G.L.O.W. at a TV expo. When the two novices realize they can’t possibly stand out in a sea of booth babes and free champagne, Bash suggests that the two of them steal the rats’ whisper campaign idea from the classic Jim Henson film.

“So you want to start a whisper campaign?” Debbie asks. “Great. So let’s shut up about the frog and I’ll follow your lead.”

It’s a sweet, silly moment that sets off a zany series of events. Bash and Debbie storm bathrooms, put on accents, and wind up convincing high-power producers to take their tapes. In the end, the ploy is a success and Bash gets a number of producers interested in syndicating the series. It also draws an immediate thematic line between the goofballs of GLOW and the fuzzy felt weirdos of The Muppet Show. So when Decider sat down with GLOW star Betty Gilpin and showrunners Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch at Summer 2018 TCA, we had to ask…how familiar were they all with The Muppets Take Manhattan?

“I love that this is a question!” Flahive exclaimed, as she and Mensch laughed.

Gilpin was a little more quiet, though. And then she said, “I guess it’s time to come clean. I’ve still never seen Muppets Take Manhattan.”

Flahive and Mensch both gasped, and then Flahive said, “That’s what we’re doing after this!”

“Wow, you waited so long to tell us,” Mensch said.

“It’s a travesty. We clearly have seen it,” Flahive said, pointing to herself and Mensch.

Gilpin said, “I mean I understood what we were talking about!”

“Did you confess to anyone on set? Like Chris [Lowell]? Or did you keep it a secret the entire time?” Mensch asked.

“I kept it a secret,” Gilpin whispered. “I mean, what did I need to know about the movie?”

Flahive said, “I think it’s actually more authentic to Debbie that you didn’t watch it.”

“If Debbie was talking about the movie, I would have watched it. One hundred percent,” said Gilpin.

Flahive and then Mensch both added in tandem, “Chris has definitely seen it.”

Gilpin might not have seen The Muppets Take Manhattan, but Flahive and Mensch wanted to make it clear that specific film, and the rest of the Muppets’ oeuvre, had a huge impact on the creative spirit of GLOW. 

“I feel like I yell, ‘You hear that, New York? The frog is staying!’ all the time,” Flahive said, quoting Muppets Take Manhattan.

Mensch added, “We feel a deep kinship with The Muppet Show. We are The Muppet Show.”

“You care about the Muppets, the Muppets sing and dance and do crazy stuff. They talk about their emotions. They sing!” Flahive said.

Mensch finally summed it up for both of them. “There are not a lot of GLOW templates out there — A League of Their Own and Muppets.”

That’s GLOW in a nutshell: A League of Their Own meets the Muppets.

Stream GLOW on Netflix