From Wil & Grace to Queer As Folk to the upcoming Who’s The Boss reboot, beloved television shows being rebooted continues to be all the rage. Now, a beloved 90’s box-office smash is getting the reboot treatment, courtesy of Amazon Prime. A League of Their Own heads to the streaming service on August 12th, bringing along a brand new cast of ladies back to the baseball field. Based on the very women who battled to play ball during World War II (loosely based on the Rockford Peaches), this iteration is also loosely based on and inspired by the real-life ball playing belles who played in the All-American Girls Baseball League in the 1940’s. Players included on the brand new team will be portrayed by an all-star team of actors including D’Arcy Carden, Chanté Adams and Abbi Jacobson. Original cast member Rosie O’Donnell is also poised to join the cast of the series, but portraying a different role entirely.
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Little is known about O’Donnell’s character, but one thing is certain; she will not be portraying Doris Murphy, her smart mouthed and beloved character from the original film, who played third base while bantering with co-stars Lori Petty and Madonna. EW reports that O’Donnell will portray a local bar owner named Vi who is a “warm, gregarious” fan of the Rockford Peaches, Vi will be interacting with Abbi Jacobson’s catcher Carson and “soon welcomes her into her orbit”.
Being recreated in 2022 means that A League of Their Own will deal with some of the themes that they only briefly flirted with during the original iteration (such as what black women went through to play in the All-American Girls Baseball League) and how many queer women actually truly played. While O’Donnell always assumed that her character Doris Murphy was (pun intended) playing for our team, EW reports that the reboot will “further explore those themes by introducing multiple queer characters”.
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