Betty Gilpin has talked about being asked to appear naked on-screen while auditioning for her first major television role.
“The first big TV job I auditioned for, I was told that getting naked on camera was the necessary toll to pay if I wanted the part,” she told IndieWire in a new interview, though declined to name the show in question.
This came ahead of celebrated work in women’s wrestling comedy Glow playing Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan – and as Dr. Carrie Roman in the Showtime comedy-drama series Nurse Jackie. Prior to that, Gilpin had various, smaller roles in Law and Order, The Good Wife and others.
Elsewhere in the same interview, the actress opened up about more positive experiences she’s had on set since, such as that in her new show Three Women. Based on the 2019 non-fiction book of the same name by Lisa Taddeo, the work explores female sexuality in the stories of three American women.
In the new show, which is currently airing weekly in the US on Starz, Gilpin’s characters appears naked on screen in several scenes but the actor says she felt they were more “honest” depictions compared to certain examples from earlier in her career.
She explained of her character, Lena, who is miserable and in an asexual marriage where her husband refuses to touch her: “[She] is both so sure of what she wants and passionate and positive and hopeful, and also in such pain and so invisible to the people around her. She feels like she’s such a prisoner in her body… no one believes her, no one’s touching her, no one’s kissing her. So when she does get what she wants, she’s feeling the most physical pleasure that she could ever imagine. Not to give Aidan too much credit! She feels the pleasure alone… with the vibrator as well.
“In Three Women, the sex scenes are some of the most important scenes in the whole piece,” she continued. “For all of the [characters], the sex scenes are very altering, pivotal moments… you’re seeing some get oxygen when they’re about to die, or experience true joy and freedom for maybe the first time ever in their lives.
“When I’ve done sex scenes in the past, I don’t think about my body as the character’s body. I’m like, we have to make Betty’s body look as fantasy-like or fake and smoke and mirror-y in order for the sex scene to go well,” she added. “It felt more like a vessel for the real story instead of some algorithm box-check and that felt very freeing.”
Gilpin is perhaps best-known for Glow, though it was unexpectedly cancelled by Netflix in 2019 despite being a big hit with fans. Gilpin wrote a moving eulogy for the show, saying in Vanity Fair that “it was the best job I’ll ever have”.
“Our business is a strange mix of attempting childhood dreams to a room full of asleep people and shirking dignity for awake tomato-throwers for rent. This was one of those extremely rare times where we got to do the dream for awake people. And it didn’t disappear in an audition room or unsent email. We did it on a show, recorded it all, I swear. Thirty episodes.”
She added: “Apparently numbers-wise, GLOW really only appealed to men in kimonos and women in cat hair, who, as far as I’m concerned, are the beating heart of the arts and the reason to keep waking up.”