From co-creators and executive producers Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham, the Amazon Studios original series A League of Their Own embraces the spirit of the 1992 film from director Penny Marshall while delving much deeper into its 1940s/World War II time period and what the dream of playing professional baseball meant to a generation of women. When Carson Shaw (Jacobson) leaves her life behind to try out for the Peaches, she meets a team of smart, funny women, each of whom is trying to overcome their own obstacles in order to find themselves out on the baseball field.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, D’Arcy Carden (who plays the equal parts sassy and confident team player Greta Gill) talked about how much she wanted to be a part of A League of Their Own, her background with baseball, and what it was like to work with the professional players. She also spoke about the challenge that came with wearing the gloves for the era, the Greta and Jo (Melanie Field) friendship, and what she thinks might need to happen for Greta and Carson, if they get to continue telling this story. She also talked about whether she’d be game to appear on the CBS series Ghosts, alongside her longtime friend Brandon Scott Jones.
Actor D’Arcy Carden joins the 3rd Hour of TODAY to talk about stepping up to the plate in Amazon’s reimagined “A League of Their Own” series. She also talks about working with Abbi Jacobson, adding the apostrophe to her name in junior high, and remembering the great moments from “The Good Place.”
Actress and comedian D’Arcy Carden, who stars in the new Prime Video series, ‘A League of Their Own,’ makes her first appearance on The Late Show and walks away as the newest member of our softball team, The Sea Captains!
After watching D’Arcy Carden kiss Abbi Jacobson’s shoulder for the third time in one Zoom call, it’s easy to see how their 15-year friendship survived the time The Good Place star was cut from the pilot of Broad City.
Over a decade ago, Carden and Jacobson met at an Upright Citizens Brigade improv class called On-Camera Commercial Acting. “I don’t think either of us thought we were gonna get on a show. It was like, Let’s get on a commercial,” Jacobson says and then laughs. Though the now 38-year-old comedian would go on to co-create Broad City, and is currently the co-creator and star of Amazon’s new series, A League of Their Own, she wasn’t appreciated in that particular class.
“Abbi was so funny and so specific and so unique. I remember going home and telling my boyfriend, who now is my husband, about this weird girl,” Carden says, recalling a performance in which Jacobson ripped open a heart and smeared blood all over her face. It wasn’t particularly well-received by their instructor, but Carden was enamored. “I do remember having that moment of like, I really see this girl. The teacher doesn’t but I do. A couple of years later, she has her own show, and it’s like, Oh no, and the world does too, but I felt like I discovered her.”
Carden, of course, would find notoriety of her own as Janet, Heaven’s all-knowing personal assistant on The Good Place from 2016 to 2020. However, one of the Emmy-nominated actor’s first roles never saw the light of day. Though Carden was initially cast as a Deals Deals Deals employee for the pilot episode of Jacobson’s hit Comedy Central series, the scene was left on the cutting room floor. Thankfully, that left room for Carden to return for five episodes as the chaotic Soulstice trainer Gemma, which caught the attention of The Good Place creator Michael Schur. “You had my back,” Carden says. ”She always stuck out her neck for me, and it truly changed my life.”
Now, the best friends have been reunited as lovers in Jacobson’s deliciously queer adaptation of the 1992 classic, A League of Their Own. Unlike the original film, which was centered around a down-on-his-luck baseball player tasked with managing an all-female team during World War II, Jacobson’s version follows an all-new batch of Peaches, led by her character, Carson Shaw. While her husband’s at war, Shaw takes the opportunity to follow her dreams of playing professional ball, but finds so much more than she could have ever expected in her mysterious—and very hot—teammate Greta Gill (played by Carden).
“I do have your back, but I didn’t make you brilliant,” Jacobson tells Carden. “I think it’s clear now. I’ll bring you on everything.”
The pair sat down with Glamour to talk about queer representation in A League of Their Own, improvising a pivotal scene, and more.
Growing up, D’Arcy Carden had three career aspirations: “rock star, actress, baseball player.”
Of course, she’s already seen success as an actor with memorable roles as Janet in “The Good Place” and Natalie in “Barry.” But in Amazon Prime Video’s “A League of Their Own,” which premiered in a binge on Aug. 12, Carden had the chance to make another one of those childhood dreams come true, hitting a grand slam as fiery Rockford Peaches player Greta Gill.
The new series from “Broad City” co-creator Abbi Jacobson and “Mozart in the Jungle” showrunner Will Graham is based on Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 film of the same name — but don’t call it a reboot. The retelling includes what Carden calls “kisses to the original,” but features all-new characters, while tackling queer storylines and racism.
“We really haven’t seen this time period through a queer lens. There’s a taste here and there — but, if anything, it’s one story, one character. This really opens the lens,” Carden says over brunch ahead of the series premiere.
“They set out to tell a more inclusive story, because we’ve already seen the story from the straight white girl lens. So let’s see what else is out there,” she continues. “Women were playing baseball. Black women were playing baseball. In 2022, getting eight hours instead of two hours, we were able to tell a bigger story. It’s what I want to watch.”
While the new series broadens its scope, Carden, who’s 42, has nothing but fond memories of watching the “life-changing,” ‘brain-busting” original film. “In the ‘80s and ‘90s, there were all these baseball movies. I was a sporty little kid and I really liked them. When ‘A League of Their Own’ came out, I didn’t even know there could be a sports movie about women,” she says. “It totally, completely holds up. It’s still incredible. The performances are incredible. There’s not a bad moment in it. I love it all. In fact, I love it more now.”
“I didn’t expect that many women!” D’Arcy Carden exclaims. It’s a blisteringly hot August afternoon, and the actor’s escaping the heat by taking a casual tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of baseball cards. She points at one featuring two women in polka-dotted uniforms. “They’re kind of…fashion plates?”
She would know. This month, Carden’s starring alongside Abbi Jacobson in A League of Their Own, a spirited TV remake of the classic film. Taking its cues from the (very real) All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, founded in 1943, the new Prime Video series follows a group of young women as they pursue their passion for the sport amid critiques of their femininity.
The Met has more than 30,000 baseball cards in its collection, and after perusing a few rare items in the museum’s Study Room for Drawings and Prints, we decide to take a stroll through the galleries in search of more. Carden is tall and lithe with wavy, dark hair that falls past her shoulders. She wears white Birkenstocks and a black dress peppered with tiny cutouts at the sleeves and hem. As we walk, Carden thinks back on the years she spent living in New York. “It was fun,” she says. “But I was truly making zero dollars.”
Carden eventually found her footing at Upright Citizens Brigade, the now infamous incubator that spawned comedians like Donald Glover, Kate McKinnon, Nick Kroll, Ilana Glazer, and Jacobson—the cocreator of League. The two met around 15 years ago, in a side class about commercial acting. “I thought that [Abbi] was so funny,” Carden says, then imitates Jacobson’s raspy, syncopated intonation: “She had this weird little voice.”
At one point, they had to write scripts for commercials, and Jacobson’s fell flat. “The teacher just didn’t get it,” Carden says. “I remember going home to my studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and saying to my boyfriend, ‘There’s this girl, Abbi, and she’s so funny, and she’s so weird. It’s just so different, and no one will ever know, because no one sees her in that class.’” She laughs and shakes her head. “And of course, that’s hilarious now, because she’s been seen and loved by the world.”
As we enter the airy room housing the Temple of Dendur, our conversation trails off. “This is my favorite room,” Carden sighs. “In the winter, in the summer, at any time of day.” A few feet away, a frazzled-looking father catches his kid before the child dunked an arm in the reflecting pool.
D’Arcy Carden from A League of Their Own (streaming now on Amazon Prime Video!) joins @Hannah Stocking to hit dingers and answer the hard questions! D’Arcy talks about her relationship with baseball/softball, along with growing up an Oakland Athletics fan as they dominated in the 1980s and 1990s! See where D’Arcy stacks up with the rest of the participants so far after she completes the game!
The new Prime Video series “A League of Their Own” acknowledges Penny Marshall’s 1992 hit film of the same name while deepening the story. While Marshall’s movie very much tackled misogynistic attitudes towards women playing baseball, it didn’t have the scope of diversity that the new series establishes, especially when it comes to exploring issues related to race and sexual orientation with the All American Girls Professional Baseball League players.
Like the 1992 film, the series explores the foundation of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGGPBL), but it dives into more of the individual stories of players who come from minority backgrounds. Starring Abbi Jacobson as Carson Shaw and Chanté Adams as Max Chapman, the show weaves the two narratives of these characters together in a complex story that’s fun yet surprisingly intimate.
“All of us love and are obsessed with the movie,” actress D’Arcy Carden who plays Dottie-esque Greta Gill, told TheWrap. “There’s so many similarities, but we really wanted to kiss the movie and then do our own thing. From the characters to expanding the lens and really showing different stories and different characters, I feel really good about how we are honoring the movie by doing our own show.”
Carden’s character Greta appears early on in the show with her best friend Jo De Luca (Melanie Field), and while the pair echo May (Madonna) and Doris (Rosie O’Donnell) from the original film, they have a more layered dynamic of friendship.
“It feels uniquely its own and yet anyone who’s a fan of the movie I think is gonna see it and go, ‘Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, I see,’” Field said of the new series.
Both Field’s and Carden’s characters fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella of women baseball players, which didn’t make it into the movie.
“The movie told the story they were setting out to tell. They told the story of those women perfectly,” Carden continued. “Guess what, there are more women. There are a lot more women with a lot more stories, and now it’s our job in 2022 with eight hours of television to tell those stories.”
The critically acclaimed film “A League Of Their Own” just had its 30th anniversary and fans can celebrate with the new Prime Video series of the same name, streaming August 12th. Stars D’Arcy Carden and Melanie Field share about the real friendships formed on set and just how impactful the film was for them growing up.
“I was a sporty kid who was also an actor, so A League of Their Own was everything to me,” enthused D’Arcy Carden as we discussed reimaging the 1940s-set sports comedy drama. She knows how much the 1992 original movie means to people because it changed her life.
The name, the period, the context, and the heart are intact, but this new cast of characters is playing their own game. As with the iconic 1992 movie, it tells the story of forming a World War II-era women’s professional baseball team. Co-created by Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham, it boasts a cast that includes real-life friends Carden and Jacobson, Chanté Adams, Melanie Field, and Dale Dickey, to name a few.
Carden and I connected over Zoom to talk frankly about what drew her to both Leagues, what made her pause, her pinch-me moments, and the difference between real baseball and TV show baseball.