Here’s how Alison Brie’s previous TV roles led her to Ruth Wilder in GLOW.
The very first time we see Ruth in GLOW, she’s auditioning for a role straight into camera. It’s intense and compelling. The only problem is she’s reading the man’s part. The part she’s supposed to be auditioning for is the one who knocks politely on the door and asks if she can get anyone coffee.
Ruth Wilder struggles as an actress and tries to find who she is in Netflix’s new show GLOW. Alison Brie, the actress playing Ruth, knows exactly who she is.
I’ve followed Alison Brie’s movies and TV shows, and when I watched GLOW, I thought to myself, “This is a character who she’s meant to play.” As Ruth, Brie is a culmination of her previous roles, and I’m going to show you why by looking at two of her most iconic television roles.
I’m sticking with Brie’s TV credits and not film because that’s where she made her mark on me. I’m also going to talk about live-action credits as opposed to voice work. Brie is a regular for Netflix’s animated series BoJack Horseman, where she voices Diane Nguyen, the ghostwriter for the memoir of washed-up actor and equine BoJack Horseman. She’s also one of the only human characters on the show.
Trudy Campbell from Mad Men
Alison Brie’s first big TV role was playing recurring character Trudy Campbell on AMC’s Mad Men. For most of the show, she plays doting wife of Pete Campbell, aspiring account man at the ad agency, and does everything she can to be a good 1960s housewife and mother. She tries pushing Pete to become more mature, but when push comes to shove, she backs off because that’s what you do as a wife. Boys will be boys, right? If he’s going to stray, then at least create a situation where he can be discreet.
Trudy Campbell isn’t a total pushover, though. After a while, she refuses to go for any of Pete’s tricks and kicks him out of the house. My favorite line of Trudy’s is in season 6, episode 3, “The Collaborators.” She demands a divorce from Pete, laying down the law by saying, “I’m drawing a 50 mile radius around this house and if you so much as open your fly to urinate, I will destroy you.” Brie delivers it with such venom, and I found myself cheering for her when I watched it.
So how does Trudy Campbell relate Ruth Wilder? Trudy is the earlier prototype. In the evolution of Alison Brie’s TV roles, Trudy is a character defined by the men in her life. While Ruth is her own woman, she’s simultaneously fighting against and working with the definitions of womanhood handed to her by the men in the show (Cuntar, anyone?).
I love how Glow is set about twenty years after Mad Men. I’d like to think Trudy would be Ruth’s mother. I also think her wrestling persona would be called “The Destroyer.”
Annie Edison from Community
Annie was my first encounter with Alison Brie. When you have a character who cares so deeply about her friends and her purple pens but can also shoot paintballs like nobody’s business, you just want to admire her.
Ruth and Annie are both fastidious students, but they’re also both unwittingly sexualized by people in their lives. I couldn’t help but notice Annie’s shirts get lower and tighter and her skirts get higher throughout Community’s run. It’s like they couldn’t just have a smart woman on the show without pointing out her boobs. Heck, they named the monkey Annie’s Boobs. But that’s what Ruth deals with everyday on Glow.
I’ve laughed every single time Sam has made of Ruth for being unattractive. Doesn’t he know this is Alison Brie? Alison Brie is beautiful. Doesn’t he know they named a monkey after her boobs?
In some ways, I think of Annie as Ruth’s kid sister, but in others, I feel like Ruth is where Annie would be when she graduated Greendale — still searching for something, except maybe she’d have the help of Troy and Abed and their dreamatorium.
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