It’s been six long years since one of Netflix’s best shows ever was devastatingly axed – but the cast are still open to returning should the opportunity arise.
In 2017, GLOW, aka Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, premiered. I’d never really watched wrestling before – the closest I’d got was devouring Gladiators in the 90s as a kid. But I loved the 80s aesthetic and found the strong female-fronted ensemble cast appealing, so I checked it out.
I can’t begin to describe how much I fell head over heels for this show and the wonderfully complex women at the centre. One of those women was House of the Dragon star Gayle Rankin, who depicted the animalistic Sheila ‘The She Wolf’.
‘It was a really profound experience. Working with that many women, on a show that was pretty revolutionary at the time,’ the actress, who currently plays Alys Rivers in the Game of Thrones spin-off, told Metro.
‘Netflix was on such a high and remains so, but it was such a special period of time in television. To be coming up with a group of women that are now my sisters.’
As someone who regards her closest female friends as her soulmates, this camaraderie filled my heart with joy. Even more so when Gayle revealed that they’re ‘still on a text thread’, and would be up for a comeback.
‘I don’t think that we’ve given up hope in our own way,’ she said, having starred in the Netflix show with Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Sydelle Noel, Kate Nash, Jackie Tohn and many others.
‘Can you imagine if we all came back together? Can you imagine in like five years or something? If we could do it, we would do it.’
For now, Gayle is playing Alys in House of the Dragon, a witchy character shrouded in mystery who’s believed to be hundreds of years old, and who’s captured the heart of the devious Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell).
In season two, Alys took Daemon (Matt Smith) on a trippy journey during his stay at Harrenhal. Aemond trod down a similarly hallucinatory path, imagining that he was having sex with his own mother in a controversial scene before realising that it was Alys in his bed.
Fans might be confused by Alys’s allegiance, given she provided a haven for two men on opposite sides of the Targaryen civil war, but the Scottish actress enjoys the character’s ‘divisive’ nature.
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‘There’s a lot of talk out there about [how] she’s either a really intense green flag or like the worst red flag you’ll ever meet, which I love as an actor. She definitely has a wild duality. I’m certainly playing that, and I think it’s cool that people are picking up on that,’ Gayle said.
‘I think it’s really amazing too when people start to also see her humanity. She’s starting to become more desperate. As the episodes go on, she’s very in control. But I do think there’s a kind of out-of-control-ness to her actions.’
In the world of Game of Thrones, Harrenhal is regarded as the most haunted and cursed castle in Westeros. Some might have been creeped out by filming their scenes there – but not Gayle.
