Genevieve Angelson chats with Backstage about landing the lead role of Patti Robinson in Amazon’s feminist period comedy-drama “Good Girls Revolt,” dealing with rejection, and playing against type.
On her leading turn as Patti.
“It’s a role I never get to play. I get to play the one who is wild, messy, and says what she wants. I was always going in for the girlfriend or sidekick or the type A. This time I get to have fun. I was really dying to do that because that’s really who I am—that’s Genevieve.”
On dealing with rejection.
“This is really a profession of recovery. That’s the secret. For me, I walk into every situation thinking that it’s going to be a rejection. That’s the reality of most jobs. It’s not about the job that you get, it’s about how fast you can recover from the ones you don’t. My job is to audition. It’s not to get the part. If I go in, if I do everything that I can do and my side of the street is clean, I won.”
READ: “5 Tips on How to Handle Rejection”
On leveling ‘artistic egos.’
“Everyone who is an actor has the same fear: that there isn’t going to be enough for me. [That] there’s not enough room, there’s not enough work. There is no reason for ego because at the end of the day, any one of us can be unemployed tomorrow. It’s the great leveler of all of our artistic egos.”
On researching for her roles.
“I’m not the kind of person who works best when she has a lot of facts in her head. I’m not the kind of person who does an extensive backstory of the character. What I do is a lot of inhabiting [of] the world of it. I’ll do a lot of research on the zeitgeist. I’ll watch a lot of movies from that time, read books about what it felt like to go to a Black Panther meeting, for example.”
On playing someone nothing like her.
“If I had the gift of being able to choose what kinds of jobs my paychecks came from, I would want to play [conservative activist] Phyllis Schlafly. Organically, I would want to play [feminist icon] Gloria Steinem, but this job gives me that chance. I want to play the farthest thing from that because it scares me a little bit. It’s equally a service to the storytelling of this [women’s rights] movement. It’s important to be someone who is compassionate when you are embodying the opposite of the thing you believe.”
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