HUSTLERMagazine.com gets in the ring with Jeanne “Hollywood” Basone for a no-holds-barred interview.
If you are like us, you loved wrestling in the 1980s. The choreographed chaos of Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper ruled our collective TVs during the Reagan years. And if you were a red-blooded American male discovering the opposite sex in 1986, you were especially transfixed and glued to the boob tube for one event: the premiere of GLOW, aka the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. The highly stylized sports entertainment series featured all the elements we loved about WWF (later WWE), but it replaced hairy topless dudes like George “The Animal” Steele and The Iron Sheik with hot chicks! Sexy female wrestlers in skintight leotards body-slamming each other in the ring—who could resist?
The hottest of them all was a heel (aka “bad girl”) named Hollywood. Portrayed by busty babe Jeanne Basone, Hollywood was the ultimate 1980s fantasy gal. Of the dozens of ladies on the show, she was the first one hired and the only 1980s GLOW girl to appear in the pilot and on all four seasons. And 34 years later, she is still the hottest of the cast. HUSTLERMagazine.com recently caught up with Basone at the L.A. Comic Con to discuss whether wrestling turns her on, why she may have been a bad influence on the other girls and what she thinks of the Netflix series GLOW, which offers a fictionalized version of the 1980s original.
HUSTLERMagazine.com: What was your first acting gig?
Jeanne Basone: It really was GLOW. I was drawing blood as a phlebotomist at a doctor’s office right after high school. I started as a receptionist, then the bio analyst said, “Do you want to learn how to draw blood?” It paid more, so I said okay. I had some friends who were doing extra work. Those are the non-speaking folks you see in the background on TV shows and in films. They said, “You got to try this.” I signed with an agency and it was cool. We got paid. We got fed. My boss at the doctor’s office did not dig that. He gave me a choice: be an actress or draw blood. That night I went home and there was a message on my machine saying I had an audition for a sports show. It was after work at the Hyatt hotel on Sunset. I thought it was for a sports trivia [show]. I went to the hotel and there were all these ladies. [GLOW creator] David McLane comes up and says, “This show is about women’s wrestling.” When McLane said it was a wrestling show, several girls got up and left.
Did you know anything about wrestling?
No! I only saw it when my grandfather would watch these black and white fights on TV of men in giant diapers.
