In a world where cultural icon Taylor Swift was forced to re-record all of her albums in order to maintain control over her own music, Tina Fey and Meredith Scardino’s Girls5Eva feels more relevant than ever. A fictional account of an early aughts girl group getting the band back together in modern day times to spite their toxic male manager, the show that originally came together during lockdown now appears to have arguably been written in the stars.
“Meredith Scardino is a genius,” states Renée Elise Goldsberry, who plays scene stealer Wickie Roy on the show. “It feels like she’s clairvoyant at times. Not just the fact that we had a big country hit when we had no idea that Beyoncé was going to change the world again, but also in her evolution of these women, starting with this idea that they are defining their voice and what they want to say. We’re all trying to do that, but she has this convention where it’s a girl group, so she has baked in the idea that something was thrust upon them that they thought they were benefiting from, but they really had no power.”
“I think they’re doing what the culture is doing at large,” muses Sara Bareilles about her character Dawn and the rest of the band, “which is taking stock and looking back at our own actions two for one. It’s a more conscious mindset, so there are things that they didn’t even know to take offense to, but now we look at that behavior and it’s heinous. Of course, it’s a little bit exaggerated in the show, but it’s kind of not, too—which is the other sickening reality, but I think it’s fun to see these women reclaim their narrative, and to be women in middle age and be taking these big swings and allowing themselves to dream.”
Working as a famous writer on Saturday Night Live during the ’90s gave Paula Pell a slightly different perspective than her castmates, but she still found her experience shaped by a similar energy. “People I grew up with were like, ‘Oh that director is a nightmare, but he’s brilliant.’ I don’t believe in that anymore. You shouldn’t be doing comedy and then walking back to your seat in between scenes miserable, you know? The older I get, the less time I have for suffering any assholes.”
Looking back on her own path to stardom from starring in Freaks and Geeks all the way to eventually running her very own late-night talk show, Busy This Week, showstopper Busy Philipps acknowledges how playing an emotionally torn pop star on Girls5Eva has strengthened her ability to reflect on her own past with grace and compassion. “I was on the cover of Maxim UK and I was so ashamed of it for so many years because I didn’t want to do it at the time. I was, like, 20 or 21, and I had been told by the head of casting at a studio that if I wanted a film career, I needed to do one of those magazines, so I did it. I hated it, and now I just found it, and I was like, ‘Ah, come on. How dumb was that?’ I’m okay with it! I have it out on my coffee table, because I’m like, those were the times, man, and I survived.”
Image Via Netflix
