Roy Price canceled ‘Good Girls Revolt.’ For the show’s stars, it’s ‘horribly meta.’
Fans are now calling for the show’s revival
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi.
Roy Price’s resignation last week from Amazon Studios amid sexual harassment allegations has been especially resonant for cast members of “Good Girls Revolt,” the series about discrimination in the workplace that Amazon didn’t renew after one season. After the cancellation, Sony, which helped produce the show, shopped “Good Girls Revolt” elsewhere. No other company took it on.
(The Lily is part of The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos.)
“The show getting canceled in that way felt so horribly meta,” said Erin Darke, who played Cindy Reston, a magazine researcher with grand career plans, in a recent interview. “And such a horrific reminder of how far we haven’t come when one guy who seems didn’t even watch it just had the power himself to say no, no one gets to watch it.”
Since the allegations against Price have become public, several of the stars have been openly tweeting about the show, and privately texting each other about the new revelations in a group chat.
Price’s resignation has ignited both actors and fans to call for the show’s resurgence.
‘Good Girls Revolt’
Based on Lynn Povich’s memoir about female journalists’ 1970 discrimination lawsuit against Newsweek magazine, “Good Girls Revolt” earned rave reviews, a 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score and plenty of media buzz. Amazon’s decision, which came just weeks after its October 2016 release, prompted the show’s creator to make the rare move of calling out Price specifically.
Roy Price
“What we hadn’t factored in is that Roy Price just doesn’t care for the show,” Dana Calvo told the Hollywood Reporter in December.
The outlet, citing insiders, reported Price didn’t think the show was an awards-season contender and questioned whether he watched the series. Calvo added: “All I know is that in the [season two] pitch, he asked us to refer to the characters by the actors’ names because he didn’t know the characters’ names.”
Reactions to the cancellation
Genevieve Angelson, who played the hard-working researcher Patti Robinson, said she “doubled over and sobbed” on her bedroom floor when she found out Amazon wasn’t renewing the series. The excitement over the show had been palpable to her; for weeks, she had been getting recognized and flooded with deeply personal fan messages.
“It was just so shocking. It was so the opposite of everything the evidence had told us,” Angelson said. “I’ve been the lead on other TV shows before, and that visceral response in my day-to-day life hadn’t happened before.”
Long before she learned about the project, Angelson had already read Povich’s book and knew some of the real-life women involved. “It was the role I was born to play,” she said. When she went to the audition, Angelson told the pilot’s director: “Cast me or don’t cast me, but please take this pilot to full series because I need this show. I think we all need this show. I don’t care if I’m a part of it, I just want you to make it.”
More than just a show
The process of making “Good Girls Revolt” was life-altering for some of those involved. The combination of the 2016 presidential election results (which came about a week after the show’s release) and playing Cindy “definitely lit a fire in me,” Darke said. “My generation hadn’t been doing enough. We had gotten complacent.”
Reactions from Amazon and Sony
- Amazon and Sony, which produced the show, both declined to comment for this story.
- But Amazon’s now-former head of comedy and drama development, Joe Lewis, said that “the show wasn’t performing at the levels we had hoped for.”
The momentum for a revival
For the past week, fans have seized on the news about Price’s departure to call for the show’s revival. Former executive Roy Price reportedly passed on “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Big Little Lies,” both of which won major Emmys, and, according to the Hollywood Reporter, he mused openly at a company party about whether the stars in the latter series would show their breasts.
The need for more female execs
Darke said the cancellation and Price controversy underscores the need for more female entertainment executives.
“‘Good Girls Revolt’ was a dream job,” Darke said. “Both to work on a show that had something to say about feminism and equality, and also to work on a show that had three female leads, who are all different people, not perfect people, but multidimensional.”
Plus, working alongside a female director, show creator and producers was a new experience.
“It felt so safe and lovely,” she said. “I miss Cindy like I miss a friend. All of us were not done telling that story.”
