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Abbi Jacobson, actress and co-creator of 'A League of Their Own,' discusses the untold stories of Black women that come to light in the new Prime series, 'A League of Their Own,' starring Chante Adams.
Transcript
00:00Well, tell us about bringing a league of their own, you know, back to life.
00:03I feel like this has been talked about for so long, and now it's here.
00:06Yeah, we've been working on it since 2017.
00:08But it's funny, it's like lining up with the 30th anniversary of the film.
00:12Like, we did not plan that.
00:14But I'm like, I'm happy it took this long, because it really feels like a perfect time for it to come out.
00:20And, yeah, like, from the initial conversations, Will Graham and I, he's the co-creator with me.
00:26It was never about, you know, remaking this movie.
00:30It does not need to be remade.
00:32And listen, you can watch your favorite movie whenever you want.
00:36It's people's favorite movie.
00:37Yes, it is.
00:38So there's a lot of pressure.
00:40But it's really about reimagining it.
00:42And, you know, Penny Marshall made this film in 1992.
00:47She was inspired by a documentary that she saw that was about the All-American Girls Baseball League, Professional Baseball League.
00:53She made this incredible film that inspired so many people.
00:55And also, there were limitations of the story she could tell in 92.
01:00We wanted to tell the stories that were overlooked, that were marginalized at the time,
01:06and talk about this generation of women who played baseball and who were fucking bad at it.
01:14Like, I mean, bad asses at it, not bad at it.
01:17They were incredible at it.
01:18And so what happens when, you know, there's a scene in the film that's like Penny acknowledging and nodding to the fact that a black woman would not have been allowed to try out.
01:28And then nothing.
01:30And ours is about, well, what happens when that door opens for some women, white women and white passing women?
01:35And what happens when it closes for everyone else?
01:38How do they go find their team?
01:40And once we started doing the research on it, it was just sort of like, these stories are important.
01:47I did not know these women's names before we started doing this.
01:51And I think people watching it, you will know these stories that are really important.
01:55And I think really important to sports history.
01:58And I never thought I'd be like in trying to tell sports history, but I feel very honored to be a part of doing that.
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