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In 1992’s A League of Their Own, Geena Davis played catcher Dottie Hinson — and the feminist, team leader role may have served as a sign of what was to come. In 2004, she started the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
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At a screening for the Prime Video series, Davis met with the new cast — including Abbi Jacobson, co-creator and star who plays the catcher role this time around. “I was excited to see a different take on it and [how they] add new elements,” Davis told The Hollywood Reporter.
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Tom Hanks’ Jimmy Dugan may have had a tough-love exterior — but IRL, Davis told People at the new series screening, he was “just a prince.” At the time, Hanks told ET that he was happy to play against the “charm monster” type fans did (and do) typically associate him with.
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“I got to be everything they never, ever let me do without it having to be the main thrust of the movie,” Hanks said at the time. Thirty summers later, he’s once again playing against type as a different kind of manager — Elvis Presley’s notorious Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis.
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Lori Petty played Kit, one half of the film’s emotional sister storyline. “Every single actress in America wanted to be in this movie because you weren’t just the girlfriend or just the wife or just the neighbor,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “This was a movie about women.”
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More recently, Petty was part of another critically acclaimed feminist ensemble — Orange is the New Black, that is, where she played inmate Lolly Whitehill for several seasons.
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Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell played Mae and Doris in the film, and their chemistry was not limited to the script. According to AFI, the ensemble cast spent months training together ahead of production — and for these two, especially, their connection lasted long after filming.
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Today, their kids play together, O’Donnell told Andy Cohen — and in 2019, she praised Madonna at the GLAAD Media Awards. “I was questioning and unsure,” she said, per Vanity Fair. “My gay life was blossoming, but I didn’t quite know what to do and she told me, ‘Rosie, just follow your heart’ — advice that I follow to this day.”
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Though Prime Video’s series is not technically a continuation of the 1992 film, there will be at least one familiar face you’ll spot along the way! O’Donnell plays Vi, described by Entertainment Weekly as a “warm, gregarious” local bar owner and Rockford Peaches fan.