Janelle James is looking back on a role that got away.
While appearing in Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, the Abbott Elementary star was asked if she’s able to watch projects she auditioned for but didn’t get. James then reflected on the one role she “really wanted.”
“I haven’t thought about this in awhile. Another thing I was excited about that I auditioned for once was GLOW. Do you remember that? The female wrestling,” James said. “I really wanted that role.”
She continued, “It was for one of the female wrestlers, and we had to make up an ’80s rap and perform it in the audition, and also do a fight scene with ourselves. I did this rap and then I did a round kick. And I remember leaving that audition like, ‘Nailed it.’ And did not get that role.”
Thus far James said she hasn’t “watched one second of that show.”
“I’m so salty,” she added before offering that perhaps she would watch it that day after the interview.
In 2020, Netflix reversed its fourth-season renewal decision on GLOW, citing COVID-19 issues as the reason they would not go forward with the series’ final installment.
GLOW had started production on season four at the time. It completed one episode and started a second before the coronavirus pandemic led to production shutdowns for it and other series and films.
The series earned 18 Emmy nominations and three wins over the course of its three-season run. The show, created by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, was a fictionalized telling of the real-life women’s professional wrestling program called Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling that launched in the 1980s.
