Alison Brie Opens Up About the ‘Great Heartbreak’ of Her Career
Alison Brie has been part of the entertainment industry for almost two decades. Although she has enjoyed success, she says there was one “great heartbreak” during her career. Here’s what she revealed.
Alison Brie’s movies and TV shows
One of Brie’s early acting roles was in a 2006 episode of Hannah Montana alongside Miley Cyrus titled “It’s My Party and I’ll Lie If I Want To.” The following year, she played Mary Elizabeth in the film Born.
From 2007 to 2015, Brie starred in Mad Men. She played Trudy Campbell from 2007 to 2015. Once that series ended, Brie starred in the TV series Community from 2009 to 2015. Some of Brie’s other acting roles include appearances in GLOW, Promising Young Woman, and How to Be Single.
Alison Brie’s ‘great heartbreak’
Brie played Ruth Wilder on the TV series GLOW from 2017 to 2019. Although she has appeared in many other shows and movies, the actor says the cancellation of GLOW was the “great heartbreak” of her career.
During an interview with Decider, Brie discusses her disappointment after the cancellation of GLOW. “It’s the great heartbreak of my career,” says Brie. “But it will forever live on as, like, this great thing. I loved working on it – maybe more than anything I’ve worked on! – and I miss it a lot. But I feel very grateful for the time I had on the show.”
The Netflix series had initially been picked up for season 4, however the decision was reversed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Yeah, it was surprising!” continues Brie during her Decider interview. “But it was sort of eclipsed by the shock of everything that was happening globally. In a way it was almost like it put things in perspective.”
Not everyone was devasted by the ‘GLOW’ cancellation
Although Brie was heartbroken over the end of the series, not everyone felt the same. Co-star Betty Gilpin says she wasn’t destroyed by the news. “Pandemic-wise, I had a couple disappointments career-wise that in the global scheme of things don’t matter at all,” she tells Collider. “When an actress cries in a forest, does anyone hear?” she joked.
Gilpin says TV show cancellations come with the territory. As an entertainer, you almost have to expect a good run will end at some point. Some actors even decide to quit acting. Gilpin tells Collider she had many disappointments during her career, but she chose to keep moving forward.
“I think if all this had happened when I was 19 and just starting out, I would have been so devastated,” Gilpin tells the publication. “But at 34, I’m kind of grateful to the decade of failing that I had, where I still supported myself as an actor, so it wasn’t total failure. But I did a lot of black box plays that no one saw and an episode of Law and Order once every four years, and that was my life for a long time.”
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