With its glorious blend of off-the-wall humor, astute social commentary, and a lesbian leading character in Paula Pell’s Gloria, Girls5eva has been a cult hit with queer audiences since it premiered on Peacock in 2021. The comedy starring Pell, Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Busy Phillips as a Y2K-era girl group that reunites 20 years later is thankfully back with an impeccably zany if not too-brief third season on Netflix. From creator Meredith Scardino (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Girls5eva’s latest season is queerer than ever as Gloria sets out to bed more than 178-types of queer women including “pre-Friends Courteney Cox type,” “lesbian Popeye,” and “cigar mommy.”
Paula Pell, Busy Phillips, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Sara Bareilles in Girls5evaEmily V. Aragones/Netflix
Still in love with her ex-wife, Caroline (Janine Brito), Gloria gives unattached sleeping around the college try. One scene has her chugging Gatorade in the nude between rounds of sex with her hookup while Goldsberry’s deliciously narcissistic Wickie attempts to hold a rare serious conversation with her. But Gloria yearns for more than paramours to check off her spreadsheet. She’s in search of her community too. When the group performs deep in the Ozarks in what Gloria has deemed a “boob desert” she’s heartened to learn that a group of women bearing telltale signs of queerness have traveled hours just to see her.
“Wolf cut [haircut], wolf sweatshirt, indoor backpack, faded Dar Williams tattoo!” Gloria exclaims while she points to the queer giveaways the women bear that indicate she’s among her people. For the record, Dar Williams is a folk musician still writing and performing today whose fan base includes diehards in and around the lesbian enclave of Northampton, Mass., dating to the '90s, where she frequently performed.
Pell wrote for Saturday Night Live for years delivering indelible characters like Debbie Downer, the Spartan Cheerleaders, and the married singing teachers, the Culps. While she has occasionally contributed ideas to beef up Girls5eva's queer specificity, she explains how the third season’s lesbian references are so right on.
“This year, my wife, Janine Brito (Caroline), wrote on the show. I knew that I had full representation in there,” Pell tells Advocate Channel “And she’s younger than me, so she has all the references that younger queer people, when they’re watching my character, would really enjoy. But that ‘wolf cut’ like that whole parade of things was so funny.”
“I’ve actually written sketches at SNL where I got pummeled by a queer journalist or something that thought that some young white straight guy wrote [my] sketch and said, ‘Those are outdated references.'" Pell shares. “Back when I was on Twitter I’d go on there and be like, ‘Well, I'm a 50-year-old lesbian and that was my sketch and I wrote it — Indigo Girls or something, and they name a newer group. So I just really enjoyed [the scene] where I immediately spot all of these things.”
Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sara Bareilles, Busy Phillips, and Paula Pell in Girls5evaEmily V. Aragones/Netflix
The episode in which Gloria’s queer women fans meet their idol, her alter ego Hospice, is bellyachingly funny. But in the series that centers women’s friendship above all else, it was also touching for Pell and creator Scardino during filming.
“The heart of that scene — Meredith and I both got teary in that scene when we were shooting it because of the idea that we’re in the middle of America. This is not my place. These are not my people. I’m not going to be able to find any people here, and then all these gay ladies drove like three hours to go see my character Hospice,” Pell says.
Regarding Gloria’s new stage name, she urges with a joke from the show, “Don’t write it down.”
Watch the full interview with Pell, Goldsberry, Phillips, and Bareilles below. All three seasons of Girls5Eva are streaming now on Netflix.
