How ‘A League of Their Own’ characters wink at the 1992 movie – The Hollywood Reporter

This July marks the 30th Anniversary of the Penny Marshall Directed Your own competitiona movie classic that reintroduced—and in some cases merely introduced—to American audiences at one of the most defining periods in American sports history.

It’s only a month earlier than when Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham’s co-created series of the same name — based on the same group of women who played in The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II — will debut.

“I think it’s as original as we can make it, based on that real competition,” Jacobson said The Hollywood Reporter during the premiere of the Tribeca Film Festival. “Penny Marshall was watching a documentary about the All-American Girls League, and then the movie came up when she saw it and said, ‘Oh, I want to make a movie about this.’ We saw the doc and then saw the movie and was like, ‘We’re going to make our own thing out of that.’”

Jacobson said viewers can expect a “few nods” to the film. Specifically, when it comes to the cast, Jacobson noted “there are little bits” of the movie characters, but “everyone is unique.”

“I don’t think characters are really assigned to anyone. Darcy’s character has a Madonna vibe, but it doesn’t resemble that character at all. Melanie Fields’ character Joe is a bit of a Rosie visual,” Jacobson said. We go to the movies the most, and there are kinks as you go along.”

“It was really nice to nod to it,” she added. “People come in like, ‘Are they going to do it?'”

Fans should also be ready that Nick Offerman’s coach Casey “Dove” Porter doesn’t exactly follow in the footsteps of Tom Hanks’ Jimmy Dugan. That’s because Jacobson and Graham wanted their view of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to revolve around the players.

“In some places you go to see the movie, the description is that it’s about a washed up player who’s going to coach a women’s league, and it’s like,’That’s what this movie is about?’” said Jacobson. “Tom Hanks is one of my favorite parts of that movie, but with this telling, the coach isn’t and Nick knew that was coming. It’s a different picture.”

While the way Porter will be positioned on the show will be different from Hanks’ movie character — Jacobson noted that the Prime Video series is “not about the coach’s redemption story” — it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a major role in the show. will play.

“When we went into the writers room, we were like, how do you approach this coaching character? That character is just so big and complete,” she said. “He really has a lot of impact, especially for my character later in the season because of what happens at the beginning.”

The role of coach will look different and, as mentioned beforejust like another memorable presence from Marshall’s movie: black female baseball players.

The co-creator and star of the show said her take on Your own competition will expand to an unnamed player in a famous streak through an amalgamation of three real black female baseball players – Connie Morgan, Toni Stone and Mamie Johnson – who competed alongside and against men in the Negro League.

“I think my character is Carson [Shaw] and Sung [Adams] character Max [Chapman] are really the hinge of the show. Those are the two worlds you ping pong between,” Jacobson said THR about how the inclusion of black women would be different from the one in the film. “Max is based on three real women and their stories are fucking incredible and Penny Marshall, in the movie, nodded at them when that foul ball was thrown back by a black woman. So it’s like, “What’s going on here?”

Understanding “what’s happening out there” and how white and black female players got through this period of both opportunity and exclusion is something Max’s storyline will provide for viewers. But her character’s particular journey isn’t just about the differences in treatment between white and black players in the game and will explore the worlds of black women, queer and gender-nonconforming people – through characters like Gbemisola Ikumelo’s Clance Morgan and Lea Robinson’s Bertie. – off the field.

“She’s many things and doesn’t want to be labeled as just one thing,” Adams said THR about her character. “She’s also trying to figure out who she really is. There are multiple opinions of people about who they think she should be and she tries to listen to them, but she also has to find out for herself.”

“I think so much of the show is about finding your team and your team, it’s not just on the field,” executive producer Desta said Tedros Reff. “I think that’s the real story and that’s a story that we’ve always talked about wanting to tell — the real people who are beyond the game. For me, it’s the story that the film couldn’t carry.”

That exploration of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s relationship to LGBTQIA+ identity is perhaps one of the biggest ways it will differ from the movie — “a queer movie where no one is overtly queer,” Jacobson said — in addition to the centering on Black Americans’ experiences. “That story is fascinating and we really wanted to dive into it and my character is yours in what that was like. That was a big percentage of the League and that’s not told at all in the film,” explains Jacobson.

“I grew up with the movie, I love the movie. As a little queer kid, I was like, ‘You can stand on the field,’ said co-creator Graham. “As we started to dig deeper into the stories below it, we were like, ‘Oh, there’s a giant story here that hasn’t been told about queer women and women of color and ultimately about joy — the work that’s about joy and the finding a way to do what you love in a world that doesn’t want to.”

The impact of the show’s decision to include the League’s historic relationship with lesbian, bisexual, and queer women has already been felt by one of its own consultants, original AAGPBL player Maybelle Blair, who told THR, “I’m 95 now and I finally think maybe I should come out.”

She did that during the Tribeca Film Festival conversation after the screening with the Your own competition cast and creatives, who shared how the show inspired her to discussing her sexuality publicly For the first time. The Prime Video series, which Blair helped inform, “is really accurate” according to the former player.

“The only thing I would say [people don’t really know] would be the sexuality of the people driving what really happened and what was real,” she said of what may have gone under the radar over the years and players of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.” When Penny made the movie , they left out a lot of it because it wasn’t the time to reveal so much. This is the real, truthful story telling.”