D’Arcy Carden Says Greta ‘Is George Clooney’ in Amazon’s ‘A League of Their Own’ Series
The Good Place actor D’Arcy Carden says that her character in Amazon’s new A League of Their Own series was a difficult role for her. Much like the original film, Amazon’s A League of Their Own features an ensemble cast of mismatched personalities drawn together by baseball.
This time around, Carden’s Greta Gill is the resident cool girl. To help her get into character, Carden drew on one of Hollywood’s coolest men for inspiration.
D’Arcy Carden plays ‘A League of Their Own’s’ Greta Gill
As the Rockford Peaches’ first basewoman, Gill stands out among the rest of the players as the picture of the All-American Girl’s Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).
She is tall and slender, with perfectly coiffed red hair and an ever-present slick of red lipstick, embodying the League’s ideal mix of femininity and baseball.
In the series, Gill and her best friend, Jo, hail from New York and meet Carson Shaw (played by series co-creator Abbi Jacobson) upon arriving in Chicago for the AAGPBL tryouts. Unlike Gill, Shaw is shy, modest, and guilt-ridden about leaving behind her life as a housewife to pursue her dreams of playing baseball. But, after meeting the flirtatious and vivacious Gill, Shaw’s life begins to change in big ways.
How George Clooney helped D’Arcy Carden find her cool
Coming from a background in comedy, Carden tells Variety that she struggled when taking on the role of Gill in Amazon’s A League of Their Own. “I haven’t played sultry,” Carden confides. “This is out of my comfort zone. I’m so used to playing the weirdo goofball.”
Searching for inspiration, Carden thought, “Greta’s cool. And she’s sexy, but she’s not trying too hard. How would a guy play her?”
Carden found what she was looking for in one of Hollywood’s most debonair leading men. “I started looking at cool actors’ performances,” Carden continues to Variety. “My little secret is that I was like, ‘This character is George Clooney.’”
Where fans have seen D’Arcy Carden before
Carden is known best for her roles on hit shows The Good Place and Barry. In The Good Place, which ran from 2016 to 2020, Carden starred alongside Ted Danson and Kristen Bell as a being with AI-level intelligence, Janet. Carden’s role on The Good Place earned the actor her first Emmy nomination in 2020. Then, in 2018, Carden also began starring as Natalie Greer in the Emmy-award-winning, Barry.
But before all of that, Carden was a reoccurring guest star on Jacobson’s Broad City. Though Carden and Jacobson had known each for years before Carden’s appearances as Gemma, it was then that Carden got her first taste of Jacobson’s vision for a newly-imagined A League of Their Own.
At the time, Carden tells Variety that she assumed she would miss the opportunity to be part of the project. “I remember her bringing it up and being so happy for her but so jealous,” Carden says. “Good jealous! Not mad jealous, but just painful. It was like, ‘Oh my God, the dream!’”
But, as fate would have it, Carden was destined to be part of A League of Their Own. Echoing the glee and wonder of the characters seen in the series, Carden tells Variety, “My dreams truly came true in a way that I occasionally can’t even believe.”
