Amazon's highly-anticipated new series Good Girls Revolt premieres on Friday and it takes viewers back to 1969, when life for women in the workplace was different — yet similar — to how it is today. Pitch Perfect star Anna Camp plays Jane Hollander, an uptight researcher at the fictional magazine News of the Week who begins to realize that she might want to pursue a career more than a rich husband. But, is Jane from Good Girls Revolt based on a real person? While journalist/screenwriter Nora Ephron (played by Grace Gummer) is featured in the series, the rest of the female researchers — including Jane — are fictional, yet inspired by a 1970 all-female class action lawsuit accusing Newsweek magazine of gender discrimination, according to MTV. Bustle reached out to Newsweek for comment on the original lawsuit and the show portraying it now, but has not yet heard back. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement in which Newsweek agreed to provide equal employment opportunities to women.
Good Girls Revolt, the series, is based on Lynn Povich’s 2012 book The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace, which chronicled her own experience with that lawsuit and her time at the magazine. As a researcher at Newsweek (just like Jane) in the 1960s, Povich worked with alongside Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller, according to the book's description. So the inspiration for Jane and the other female researchers on the show definitely seem to have some real-life roots.
"Jane is a fictional character. But Grace felt a little bit of that pressure, playing Nora, who’s real," Camp told MTV in an interview. "I mean, we’re all representing these specific women who did work at Newsweek at the time, and there’s an honor that you carry when you get cast in something like this."
And Camp told The Daily Beast she's proud to take this important story for women to the TV screen. “There was no term yet for sexual harassment or sexual discrimination," she said. "These ladies we’re portraying had to find these words and define it so that we could fight against it."
Camp also said she hopes Good Girls Revolt inspires women to stand up to workplace discrimination and sexual harassment, according to People. “Young girls — stand up,” she said. “Stop competing with one another and come together and stand up for yourselves in the moment." Camp continued: "I’ve had times where I was sexually harassed or sexually discriminated against, and I go home and I don’t say anything in the moment and I mull over it and I can’t go to sleep and I think: 'Why didn’t I just stand up or myself?'" admitted Camp. "It’s OK to stand up for yourself."
In Good Girls Revolt, it takes a bit of time for Jane to realize this as well, standing by as her other female counterparts plot an uprising at the News of the Week, according to MTV. "It’s not an easy kind of role to play," Camp told The Daily Beast. "She’s holding onto her ideals so staunchly, but you still want her to be endearing and likable, and have people understand and root for her, too."
As women are still fighting for equal rights and to stop harassment in the workplace, Good Girls Revolt shows how far women have come — and how far women's rights still have to go.
